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April 2015


Grow Beyond Your Fears This Spring and Let Creativity Bloom!


Art Classes at Danforth Art

Art classes for all ages and experience levels at Danforth Art

With the arrival of spring, comes a new opportunity to let creativity bloom in spring classes and workshops, designed for all ages and levels of experience. Danforth Art classrooms are a safe haven for creative renewal and personal discovery. Let this be the season to grow beyond what you have been capable of, by trying a new art-making experience. Change your thinking from “I can’t,” to “I can’t wait to try something new!”

Our faculty teaches creativity to students of all ages, regardless of experience or skill. Many of our teachers are professional artists who offer personalized feedback in a nurturing and positive environment. Each class becomes a supportive community in which students celebrate each other’s accomplishments and tackle challenges together. As you work on expressing yourself in art, you can start to doubt yourself or fear the criticism of others. But, with a teacher who is sensitive to how to make students comfortable, students of all levels thrive by developing basic skills, learning the artistic process, and becoming more proficient with technique.

"Many students come to art with preconceived notions of what is good and bad, and what they can and cannot do,” says Danforth Art faculty member Ruth Scotch. “My challenge, as an art teacher, is to give them the tools to get beyond their inner critic and to help them develop the skills they need to progress in their work.”

Even if you have never picked up a pencil to draw before, you can learn to see with an artist’s eye. Our teachers help students break down an image to simple shapes and values, and to explore negative space in and around their subject. Developing these abilities takes time, but with guidance your own sense of creativity and artistry will flourish.

“I feel I’m doing my job when someone says they have moments outside of class when they see color or shape in the world like they never have before,” says Danforth Art faculty member and celebrated artist Ron Krouk. “One of the great gifts of the visual arts is that ability to actually change our perceptions.”

“Your brain, while being a handy organ, will try to interfere with your perceptions in art as you draw and paint,” Scotch reminds her students, “It will tell you wrong values and colors and sizes of objects that you are trying to paint until you become a more experienced artist.”

In Danforth Art’s studio art classes for children, each teacher encourages young children to develop their artistic eye and helps older children hold on to it.

“Studio art classes are an important component to a well-rounded education because they provide opportunities for self-expression, creative problem-solving, spatial reasoning, and fine motor development,” says Noelle Fournier, Children’s Studio Education Manager. “If your child prefers drawing to most other activities, if you see an astute observation reflected in the images he/she creates, or if you notice a sophisticated or advanced use of a medium, your child will likely have great success with art-making as he/she grows.”

In our classrooms, our teachers encourage their students to talk about their work, teaching techniques and methods in a way that is freeing rather than limiting through open-ended exploration. Children are taught to use their art-making tools, to observe the visual cues more closely than by just “looking” and to imagine and stretch the possibilities of their work.

As part of the classroom experience, we bring children into the museum galleries to look at what different artists choose to put into their works, to learn to respond to art and find inspiration in it.

“This type of experience is building an oral vocabulary, “ explains Amy Briggs, Assistant Director of Visitor Learning and Experience at Danforth Art, “but it is also contributing to a child’s visual literacy – a skill that is arguably equally important to traditional literacy but not one that is heavily emphasized in school curriculum. By building a visual vocabulary children become appreciative of colors, textures, shapes, and lines all around them. This is by its very nature the basis for the development of art appreciation.”

Grow beyond your fears this spring and let creativity bloom! We are currently registering for studio art classes and workshops for the spring season (through June 8), April Vacation Week, and Summer Arts for Children and Teens. We will open registration for summer classes for adults later this month.

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February 2015


Get Lost in the Scenery


Renee Rothbein, Garden (Inflorescence), (detail)

Renee Rothbein, Garden (Inflorescence) (detail), 1969.
Oil on canvas. 55”x67.”  Courtesy of Harriet Fishman.

This spring, Danforth Art invites you to get lost in the scenery, in landscapes and interiors—bucolic and urban, natural and artificial, romantic and ruptured—and discover a view outside of the frame in exhibitions on view from March 15, 2015, to May 17, 2015.

“An exploration of the landscape is particularly appropriate for spring,” says Jessica Roscio, Associate Curator, “and it is a breath of fresh air to pair conventional views with expressive abstractions that redefine our definitions of the landscape. In conjunction with the Permanent Collection we will be exhibiting paintings, prints, and photographs by contemporary artists Prilla Smith Brackett, Amy Ragus, and Elizabeth Ellenwood that explore the landscape in untraditional ways, through an exploration of light, line, and vision.”

The Expressive Voice: Landscape Reimagined is the third installment of a year-long exploration of Danforth Art’s Permanent Collection. Works on view this spring represent both traditional landscape interpretations and compelling, unconventional approaches. A significant focus of this installation is work representing artists associated with Boston Expressionism. These artists complicate our understandings of landscape by working primarily from memory, resulting in scenes that are often deeply psychological and emotionally intensive. From a distance, Hyman Bloom’s Seascape appears to be a marbled surface of red and blue hues, but up close becomes a macabre landscape with fish gnawing at and devouring each other. Gerry Bergstein’s, Blackboard #2, a new acquisition which complements another piece from the same series already in our Permanent Collection, is a chaotic juxtaposition of seemingly disconnected images reflecting artistic anxiety and the psychological landscape.. Contemporary works on view include both complex abstracted approaches to the natural world and pieces that more immediately reference traditional landscape traditions. Robert Ferrandini’s “Here the eye ultimately composes itself…,” is complex, lush, and haunting, in the tradition of Hudson River Valley School. A grouping of recent acquisitions by Scott Prior include landscapes and still lifes that are captivating, realistic, and exacting in the tradition of the Pioneer Valley.

Framingham artist David Berger’s paintings and prints are ecstatic celebrations of domestic life on view in Space for the Human Heart. Called a “poet of the home” by fellow artist Lawrence Kupferman, Berger created painted meditations on the quiet moments shared between parents and children in tranquil rooms and open landscapes.

Prilla Smith Brackett and Amy Ragus: Fractured Visions brings together the paintings and photographs of two artists who have employed fragmentation and multiplicity in their works long before we could reframe our world view with just a click of a finger. Both Brackett and Ragus mix nature and artifice, employing a collage aesthetic to represent reality. Brackett’s landscapes celebrate the natural world while reminding us of its fragility in the face of man-made intrusions. Ragus’ photographic collages combine hundreds of individual images of a given scene, digitally manipulating open vistas of woods, waterfalls, and mountains.

On exhibit in Of Light and Line, Elizabeth Ellenwood’s photographs are distinctly rooted in place and the everyday, and her process and treatment of subject matter emphasize the importance of the elements of photography. Her compositions are elegantly simple, highlighting her negotiation of natural light, line, shadow, and the richness of tone

“All of the exhibitions on view this spring ask the viewer to look carefully,” says Jessica Roscio, “and to consider how these works function as landscapes.”

Spring Exhibitions open to the public on Sunday, March 15. A Members Only Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, March 14. If you are not yet a member and would like to join us for this event, we encourage you to sign up for a membership now. An email invitation will be sent via Eventbrite this week; advance registration is required.

Save the Date for Artist Talks!

  Wednesday, March 25, 12:30: Prilla Smith Brackett and Amy Ragus
  Sunday, March 29, 3:00pm:  Prilla Smith Brackett
  Wednesday, April 8, 12:30pm:  Elizabeth Ellenwood
  Sunday, April 12, 3:00pm:  Amy Ragus
  Sunday, April 19, 3:00pm:  Elizabeth Ellenwood
  Sunday, May 3, 4:00pm (immediately following Drop into Art):  Jennifer Goldfinger, in the Children’s Gallery

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January 2015


Jack Kramer, Self-Portrait with Jack

Jack Kramer. Self-Portrait with Jack, n.d.
Oil on canvas. 49 ¾ x 31 ¾ inches.
Collection of Danforth Art.
Gift of the Jack Kramer Estate.

Beat the Winter Blues at Danforth Art!

New Englanders were spoiled by warmer than usual weather early this winter, but the cold has finally hit! After the holiday celebrations have passed and it feels like spring will never arrive, many of us will face the dreaded whining and moping of cooped-up children and adults as the common seasonal depression known as the “winter blues” sets in. Luckily, this winter Danforth Art offers you COLOR, CREATIVITY, and COMMUNITY sure to boost your spirits!

COLOR! A dark and drab winter begs for color. Stop by Danforth Art to see the variety, depth, and beauty of color in our winter exhibition Facial Expressions, an installation of portraiture from the Permanent Collection. Red! Vigorous in David Aronson’s Three Musicians IV, and wild in Robert Beauchamp’s self-portraits. Gold! Splendid and bold in Scott Prior’s Boys and Girls, or Barbara Swan’s Baby. Green! A crisp backdrop in Haley Hasler’s Self-Portrait as a Woman Serving a Meal and a restful one for Marie Danforth Page’s Portrait of Mrs. Frederick L. W. Richardson and Her Son David. Blue! The pop of a blue umbrella in Charles Sprague Pearce’s A Village Funeral at Brittany, of a worker’s shirt in Gerritt Beneker’s The Steam Fitter, or in the surreal face emerging in Leonor Fini’s Visage Dans La Vitrine. Against the bleak winter’s blanket of white and threadbare trees, the neutral nudes and deep black of paintings by Gilbert Stuart and Erastus Salisbury Field are rich, and the simplicity of a black and white palette in many exhibited drawings and prints is stunning. Facial Expressions is on view Wednesday through Sundays through March 1. Visit here for gallery hours.

CREATIVITY! Experts agree that keeping your mind busy with a new hobby is an effective way to beat the winter blues. Whether you are an experienced artist or an absolute beginner, Danforth Art has a class or workshop for you. Limited spaces are still available in some Winter Session classes for adults, teens, and children that started this week, and registration is ongoing for workshops throughout the season. Inspired by our current exhibitions? Why not learn to draw the figure—its proportion, anatomy, and special relationships—in a workshop on February 7, or in the Expressive Portraiture painting workshop on January 24? Three watercolor workshops explore this luminous and varied technique from Color Mixing on March 6, Landscapes on March 13, and Watercolor on Masa, a Japanese paper, on March 14. Spend a day with Bob Collins creating a variety of sculptures in different media on March 21. Get the girls together for a Ladies Night Out evening workshop, or get to know that new camera in Digital Camera Demystified on January 12. See the full schedule of classes and workshops online here.

A special note for parents and guardians: Think ahead to summer! Danforth Art will open registration for Summer Arts for students in grades 1-12 in January. Register by March 1 and save! Creativity grows here this summer in a restructured program focusing on weekly nature themes.

COMMUNITY! Join our art-minded community—young and old—in celebration of art and art-making at our Free Family Days coming up on January 19 for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and February 16 for President’s Day. Admission to the Museum is free for all from 12 noon until 5 pm on our Free Family Days, with gallery tours, art projects, story time and creative play offered from 2 to 4 pm.

On January 19, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, we’ll celebrate the legacy of Civil Rights leader Dr. King and explore the artwork of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Faith Ringgold, and John Wilson. Create a quilt-like design with patterned textiles in a studio art project inspired by Ringgold’s lithograph The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles, or join a gallery tour of our new installation of works by Meta Fuller. On February 16, Presidents’ Day, the exhibition Once Upon a Pop-Up: From the Ellie G. Levine Movable Book Collection will inspire a day of storytelling and art-making. Activities include story illustrations and 3-D character-making in the art studios, and storytelling, games, and photo booth in the galleries. Learn more at Family Events.

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December 2014


Brian Kaplan

Jon Imber, Portrait of Philip Guston in a Green Coat (detail), Oil on canvas

Like Visiting Dear Friends

Stepping into the galleries at Danforth Art this winter is like visiting dear friends. Facial Expressions, a multi-gallery installation of works from the Permanent Collection, includes portraits — real and imagined, traditional and unconventional — representing a range of art historical movements. A survey of the depiction of the figure in American Art for nearly two hundred years, Facial Expressions will surround you with both stark and beautiful, all compelling, representations of humanity. In this exhibition, people are captured at their best and their worst, both staged and raw. Although we may not understand the time and place of the sitter, many of these figures seem known to us, their faces fundamentally familiar.

The earliest portraits on view in this exhibition are by Gilbert Stuart, the foremost portraitist of the Federal period, known for his portrait of George Washington which was adapted for the one dollar bill. His warm and textured portraits of Dr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Coffin are expertly-crafted, and were commissioned by the wealthy upper-class. In contrast, portraits of Sally Bagg Mooers and Jonathan Mooers by Erastus Salisbury Field, a largely self-taught itinerant portrait painter, represent a working style and aesthetic popular in the mid-19th century.

Works by Boston Expressionists, many of which you will recognize, are renewed in the context of this exhibition, and represent the imagined portrait, the self-portrait, and portraits of mentors. David Aronson’s Three Musicians IV is an important recent acquisition which features the artist’s own self-portrait as the face of all three figures. Jon Imber’s portraits explore both his biological and artistic families with warmth and intimacy.

In the central Pigors Gallery, you are met by Gregory Gillespie’s Fertility Shrine, a monumental work in both size and theme, both a portrait of his wife Peggy and a self-portrait of the artist himself. Referencing art history, the piece is a shrine to productivity, fertility, and creativity, and is one of several hyper-realistic yet surreal works on view by artists from Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley.

The more than 100 works of art on view, including paintings, photographs, sculpture, and prints, represent the diversity of Danforth Art’s Permanent Collection. Danforth Art has acquired works of art since opening in 1975 to support its mission of proving access to significant regional art to the community. Today, the Permanent Collection contains 3,500 objects, which includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photographs, and other works on paper. The Collection holds works of historic and contemporary American Art, with a concentration in Boston Expressionism and Contemporary art by New England artists, as well as a significant special collection of ephemera, process pieces, and studies by the African-American sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968).

Danforth Art is committed to the stewardship of the Permanent Collection, to assure that the community will enjoy these works of art for years to come. Your gift toward the Danforth Art Annual Appeal helps support our ongoing collections care, from evaluation to preservation, as well as the installation of compelling exhibitions.

We could do none of this without your engagement and support. We invite you to rediscover old friends this winter. Our galleries are open on Thursday 12pm to 8:30pm, Friday and Saturday 10am to 5pm, and Wednesday and Sunday 12pm to 5pm. We hope to see you soon.

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November 2014


Danforth Art building

A Year in Review: A Report from Danforth Art 2014 Annual Meeting

Thank you to all who joined us on October 14, 2014, for our Annual Meeting. For those of you who were unable to attend, please let us share some of our successes with you! 2014 was a year of important growth for Danforth Art, both with the purchase of the Jonathan Maynard Building and with the expansion of staff necessary to grow towards our new location. We raised more money than ever before, a powerful reflection of the coalescence of support that will prepare us for our 40th Anniversary year in 2015, and for many years to come.

Just look at all we accomplished:

Exhibitions and Visitation: Danforth Art welcomed more than 10,000 visitors in 2014 for celebrated exhibitions, including Porfirio DiDonna: A Painter’s Journey, Jon Imber: Carry On, Winfred Rembert: Beyond Memory, Barbara Swan: Reflected Self, and the Annual Juried Exhibitions—Off the Wall and Community of Artists. In the spring, we held our first Student Juried Exhibition, a showcase of contemporary work created by our talented students, and a celebration of the formation of an artist, and the joy, and practice of art-making.

Acquisitions and Permanent Collection: Danforth Art continued to grow its Permanent Collection with 133 acquisitions through two significant collections, portfolios of work, and acquisitions through exhibitions. Recent acquisitions have helped grow the Permanent Collection in works of Boston Expressionist and Pioneer Valley art, in contemporary works in all media, and in contemporary photography.

Studio Art School: Danforth Art School offered nearly 500 classes for adults, teens, and children, deepening our commitment to teaching the foundation of a quality studio arts education, and offering new and interesting mediums to students of all levels. We welcome more than 2000 adults and children each year to our classes and workshops. The School employs 35 art instructors.

Public Programs & Events: Danforth Art invites the community to find inspiration in art on view, to learn to understand art, and to participate in art-making at a variety of public programs, many of which are offered free of charge. Annual programs include Drop Into Art, Free Family Days, Free Fun Friday, and more. Gallery talks, led by our Docents, and artist demonstrations round out the robust schedule of annual offerings. In 2014, nearly 1300 people attended benefit and special events. 50 adult and teen docents, and nearly 40 interns and volunteers, made these programs possible.

What can you expect in 2015? As we enter our 40th anniversary year in 2015, we hope to reconnect with, and to celebrate, our community this year. We will invite a broad public to discover, or perhaps rediscover, Danforth Art, to reflect back on our history and to look ahead to a bright future. Stay tuned! There’s lots more creativity, inspiration, art, and fun to come!

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October 2014


Fay Chandler, Enigma

Fay Chandler, Enigma,
mixed media on canvas, 96” x 60”,
Collection of Danforth Art,
Gift of the artist, 1995.18

Creative Community: Danforth Art in Collaboration with The Art Connection Opens Wednesday, October 8

In the early 1990s, prolific painter and sculptor Fay Chandler sat before her large inventory of work—colorful paintings and fanciful found-object sculptures created in thirty years of “adventures in living.” A truly altruistic spirit, Chandler believed that all people should have access to art, and that one painting or sculpture could make a tangible difference in the life of an individual or community. Rather than sit in storage, she thought, her art could serve the community; it could be transferred to social services that could otherwise not afford to purchase art. From this simple idea, a unique and enriching art donation program was born.

The Art Connection, a Boston-based organization that connects artists to underserved communities through the donation and placement of original contemporary artwork by emerging and established artists, as well as works donated by collectors, in area social service agencies, was founded by Fay Chandler in 1995. Two decades later, this organization has placed 6,600 original works in social service agencies, providing clients of these agencies with opportunities for reflection, inspiration, and comfort.

As a community art museum anchored by the core belief that art has a transformative power, Danforth Art is pleased to open Creative Community: Danforth Art in Collaboration with The Art Connection, a dynamic collaborative exhibition featuring 21 artworks from The Art Connection portfolio, on Wednesday, October 8, 2014. At the heart of the Creative Community exhibition is Fay Chandler’s Enigma, a mixed media work donated by the artist to Danforth Art in 1995 as her first gift to a non-profit organization. Many of the artists included in the exhibition have been previously included in Danforth Art’s Annual Juried Exhibition. Participating artists are: S.A. Bachman, Martha Jane Bradford, Jessica Burko, Catherine Carter, Carlyn Ekstrom, Gail Jerauld Bos, Susan Heideman, Suzanne Hodes, Susan Makin, Debra Olin, Ivan Schwebel, Adam Sherman, Nan Tull, Amanda Kay Wallace, and Maxine Yalovitz-Blankenship. In conjunction with the exhibition, and in recognition for her work, Danforth Art will host a presentation and reception to honor Fay Chandler on Sunday, October 26, 2014, at 3pm.

Through this exhibition, Danforth Art will help to expand The Art Connection's reach into the MetroWest region. The paintings, drawings and prints exhibited in Danforth Art’s Creative Community exhibition this fall are available to be gifted by the participating artists and collectors to qualified MetroWest-area hospitals, clinics, and other qualifying social service agencies. Social service agencies interested in selecting art work are encouraged to contact Danforth Art Assistant Curator Jessica Roscio at 508.620.0050 ext. 12 or . Potential recipients may review eligibility requirements on The Art Connection website.

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September 2014


Hyman Bloom, Seance II

Hyman Bloom, Séance II, Oil on canvas. 64” x 56”. Collection of Danforth Art. Gift of Herbert P. and Marylou Gray.

Danforth Art’s Permanent Collection
“Brought to Light” This Fall


This fall, remarkable works from Danforth Art’s Permanent Collection, including many recent acquisitions not previously exhibited, are “brought to light,” taken from the darkness of storage and put on view in the wide-reaching exhibition The Expressive Voice: Brought to Light. Across five galleries, almost one hundred paintings, photographs and other works by Boston Expressionists and contemporary artists showcase the distinctive blend of visionary painting, dark humor, religious symbolism, and social commentary that define Boston Expressionism as a movement. Included in the exhibition are the movement’s founding members—prominent Boston painters Karl Zerbe, Jack Levine, Hyman Bloom—as well as later generations—David Aronson, Jason Berger, Arthur Polonsky and numerous others. The Expressive Voice: Brought to Light also features a number of which are recent acquisitions, “brought to light” this season and exhibited as part of our Permanent Collection for the first time. Today, Danforth Art holds more than 300 works of art considered to be of the School of Boston Expressionism, including four generations of artists from the 1930s to the current day. Considered together, artists of each generation allow us to trace the presence of an “expressive voice” in contemporary art. While each artist works in their own way, their work continues a tradition of painterly expressionism, expanding our consideration of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and printmaking.

The Expressive Voice: Brought to Light is one of three exhibitions opening with our Fall Open House on Sunday, September 7, 2014. Also on view are photography exhibitions Brian Kaplan: Not Your Vacation and Sarah Pollman: Aura/Ground. Join us at our Fall Open House for docent-led talks, studio art demonstrations, hands-on art-making, and much more. Activities, fun for both children and adults, include: Clothed Model Drawing, Oil Pastel, Botanical Watercolor and Oil Painting Demonstrations, Express Talks about works on view, a Self-Guided Family Activity, and a Collaborative Mural Project. Interested in studio art classes? Register in person at our Fall Open House and you’ll receive special one-day-only discounts on studio art classes and workshops. Free admission from 12 to 5 pm with activities from 2 to 4 pm.

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August 2014


Fall Art Classes

Student artwork

Curriculum for Creativity: How Back-to-School Advice Can Inspire Artistic Expression!

As fall approaches, we are inundated with advertisements for back-to-school promotions from clothing clearances to bargain backpacks. Fresh-faced children in these ads bound through orange and brown fallen leaves toward bright yellow school buses eager to start a new year. But, Back-to-School can be a time of positive transition for all ages and is a great time to reinvigorate your creativity!

Let this Back-to-School season be a season of reinvention, of learning, and of promise. Participation in art education can enhance the quality of life, empowering both individuals and communities to thrive. Now is the time to learn a new skill, to seek inspiration, to refresh your spirit.

Creativity, expression, cultural understanding, fellowship, and a deep sense of community blossom in Danforth Art’s studio art classes. From semester-long studio art courses to one-session workshops, Danforth Art offers something for everyone from absolute beginners to experienced artists. Sign up for a semester-long studio art class by September 2 and you’ll save $40 on your registration! Or, register in person at our Fall Open House on September 7 for even deeper discounts, including one-day-only deals on workshops and shorter session classes!

Here are some tips, variations of traditional Back-to-School advice, to get your own Art School year off to an inspired start!

  1. Reestablish your routines and create an environment conducive for creativity: Fall is a great time to say goodbye to the lazy days of summer and become more disciplined in your art-making. Clear your workspace, restock your supplies, and get organized. Open your schedule to include time for art-making at a time of day when you feel best motivated. With Danforth Art’s variety of class times and session lengths, you’re sure to find something that fits your fall schedule.

  1. Reconnect: It’s tough to stay in touch with friends and mentors during summer vacation but fall is a great time to reconnect. Been taking the same class for years? Why not try a new class time or instructor for this season? Or, sign up for a Ladies Night Out workshop with your best girlfriends. Take classes together, and be part of the fabulous community that makes Danforth Art unique.

  1. Recharge: Jump into learning with both feet and feel your creativity refueled. Set goals for the new year, consider how your artwork might progress, and what classes might prepare you, from fall to spring. Did you start out with drawing classes? Maybe it’s time to move on to painting! Danforth Art’s faculty and staff are happy to help you find a class or workshop that will challenge and engage you.

We hope to see you in September! Learn more about Studio Art Classes for all ages and scroll through or download the PDF of our Fall class catalog online here.

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July 2014


Sidewalk Art at Free Fun Friday 2013

Sidewalk Art at Free Fun Friday 2013

Art-Making, Gallery Talks and More
for the Creative and Curious!

Free Fun Friday Returns to Danforth Art on July 25

Looking for some creative fun this summer? Join us at Danforth Art on Friday, July 25, for FREE FUN FRIDAY, sponsored by the Highland Street Foundation.

Free admission! Come view Summer Juried Exhibitions
Off the Wall
and Community of Artists free of charge! See more than 225 diverse, inspiring and surprising works of art by emerging and established artists from throughout the region.

Gallery activities enhance your visit! Learn about art on view and consider the many different materials and methods exhibited through docent-led tours. Try your hand at a variety of gallery games like Bingo and Combo Creations. Meet exhibiting artists to learn the personal story of their art work. Play with pop-up books from Pop-Up Shape and Color: From the Ellie G. Levine Moveable Book Collection, and make your own whimsical paper creations. Even story time will be full of movement, sound and other pop-up surprises!

Hands-on art-making! Join us under the tent for art-making inspired by works on view in the museum. Explore texture and the natural form by creating a multi-layered rubbing inspired by Michelle Lougee’s exhibited ceramics installation Cells, cropped. Several paintings, photographs, and drawings on exhibit encourage you to look to the clouds for inspiration for your own skyscape watercolor. And, create your own print inspired by Julia Talcott’s first prize winning linocut and collage Log and her piece Nature Girl.

The full schedule of activities will be available on our website by Monday, July 14. 

Make the most of your Free Fun Friday by planning ahead for your visit:

• Gallery activities, art-making and tours are designed for all ages. We encourage you to prepare your children
   for their visit by reminding them about the basic rules of art museums: no photographs, no touching, and
   no food or drink.

• Looking for a bite to eat? Visit Natick’s own Trolley Dogs food truck parked at Danforth Art for mouth-
   watering, all-beef hot dogs, beverages, and much more. Poland Springs water will also be provided.
   No food or drink is allowed in the museum, but outdoor picnic areas will be available.

• Stollers are not allowed in the museum on Free Fun Friday, but designated stroller parking areas
   will be available.

• There will be NO parking at Danforth Art on Friday, July 25. Street parking is widely available in the
   neighborhood (Please read street signs and meters for parking restrictions and time imits.) and
   additional parking is available in the Pearl Street Garage about three blocks from the museum.

• Bringing a group? Given the popularity of Free Fun Fridays, we encourage groups to avoid the crowds by
   scheduling a visit to Danforth Art on another day. If you would like to visit as a group on Free Fun Friday,
   July 25, please contact us in advance at 508-620-0050 ext. 43 or tours@www.danforthart.org  so we may
   better serve you.

To learn more about Free Fun Friday events at other local sites and museums, please visit www.highlandstreet.org/freefunfridays

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June 2014


Jodi Colella

Jodi Colella, Traces I, Charcoal on oil paper, 72 " x 53", 2014 Second place prize, Off the Wall.

Over the Moon Open House Celebration

You are invited to join us on Sunday, June 8, for the Over the Moon Open House, a public celebration of summer juried exhibitionsOff the Wall, Community of Artists, and our first Student Juried Exhibition—and recognition of Danforth Art’s educational opportunities for artists of all levels and abilities. This event is free and open to the public. Join us!

We’re opening our doors with free admission from 12 to 5 pm so all may come and enjoy diverse and exciting work across all mediums by new and established regional artists, including our own talented studio art school students. See over 380 works of art, including our 2014 Off the Wall prize winners (in order first place to third place): Julia Talcott’s Log, Jodi Colella’s Traces I, and Deborah Barona’s Into the Shade, Installation IV.  Hear about work on view from some of the exhibiting artists at Spotlight Talks between 1 and 4 pm, featuring Christina Balch (Community of Artists), Eric Gehring (Community of Artists), Saberah Malik (Community of Artists), Carolyn Newberger (Off the Wall), Thomas Stocker (Off the Wall), and Jaime Young (Off the Wall).

From 2 to 4 pm, find inspiration as you watch school faculty members create. Visual artist Laraine Armenti, who works primarily in oil paints and is new to Danforth Art’s faculty this year, will demonstrate painting techniques in Classroom 6. Studio potter and celebrated teacher Hana Reilly, Danforth Art faculty since 2006, will show wheelworking techniques in Classroom 5.

Then, engage with art in our galleries and studio art classrooms from 2 to 4 pm! Our fun, self-guided Exhibition BINGO! game will have you hunting for colors, patterns, and other elements of art in exhibited works. Inspired by the bold prints on view, our studio printmaking activity allows you to carve your own stamp or use an artist-designed stamp to explore pattern. Roll the dice and contribute to our collaborative wall mural with Mural Mashup in the auditorium.

Most work exhibited in the annual juried exhibitions is available for purchase. Preview works before your visit in our online catalogs. Ask about artwork on view in Off the Wall or Community of Artists at the Art Sales desk in the Rosenberg Gallery on the day of the Open House or at the admissions desk anytime. Ask about artwork in the Student Juried Exhibition in the School Office. To learn more about Art Sales, contact Amber Price at (508) 620-0050 ext. 16.

Why are we Over the Moon this year? Since 2007, Danforth Art has hosted a fabulous annual event called Over the Moon benefiting the Deborah D. Blumer Fund, in support of all educational programming at Danforth Art. This year, we have combined our annual benefit events Over the Moon and Off the Wall into one grand Over the Moon weekend, a celebration of the formation of an artist and the joy and practice of art-making.

A Special Thanks to our Event Sponsors and Patrons

Half Moon
The NAN Award

Crescent Moon
Roger and Tracy Jeanty
Sally S. Lutz
Marcia and Paul Rosenberg
Colleen and Brian Rolph
Stanhope Framers
Tarlow, Breed, Hart & Rodgers, P.C.

New Moon
Doug Curtiss Landscaping Design, Inc.
Peter and Hinda Drotch
Bill and Berna Haberman
Herb Connolly Auto Group
Helen Meyrowitz
Nina Nielsen and John Baker
Page Waterman Gallery
Richard and Margie Perse
Judy Riegelhaupt
Harold and Millie Tubman
Nan Tull

In-Kind Sponsors
Art New England
Edelweiss Bakery
JetMail
Winston Flowers

Danforth Art Sponsoring Trustees
Adam Adelson
Richard Baiano
Brian Bishop
Keena Clifford
Susan Gebbie
Susan Litowitz
Mimi Macksoud
Maureen McGee
Julia von Metzsch
Sue Miller
Dave Morganelli
Bob Murchinson
Nina Nielsen
Marc Plonskier
Esther Pullman
Amy Rossi
Kurt Steinberg
Betsy Swartz
John Thompson
John Whisnant

Supporters of The Deborah D. Blumer Fund
Irwin Blumer
The Blumer Family
David and Milly Katzman
Debby Rosenblatt
Sheila and Bob Rosenblatt
Dr. and Mrs. Irwin Thompson

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May 2014


Julia Talcott

Julia Talcott, Nature Girl, Linocut. 24"x74".
Courtesy of the artist. Featured in Off the Wall.

We’re Over the Moon about Juried Exhibitions!


A vivid, red sun bursts from behind the graphic, black and white earth of Julia Talcott’s linocut print Nature Girl. Selected as the image for our summer postcard, a powerful image ofvitality and growth, Nature Girl is just one of 240 exceptional contemporary works featured in this year’s Juried Exhibitions Off the Wall and Community of Artists. Danforth Art’s Juried Exhibitions place new and emerging artists next to established artists, and are a celebration of the development of an artist’s voice and vision. Off the Wall and Community of Artists are on view at Danforth Art from June 8 through August 3.

For the first time, a Student Juried Exhibition, a showcase of contemporary work created by the talented students in our studio art school, will be on view in the School Gallery on the second floor from May 12 to June 14. Together, these three shows reflect Danforth Art’s role as a special home for artists and art-lovers of all ages and abilities.

Jennifer Gross, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, served as 2014 Juror for Off the Wall, selecting 53 works by 37 artists for that exhibition. Danforth Art’s Director Katherine French selected 187 works by 183 artists for Community of Artists this year.  Selections for the Student Juried Exhibition were made by Katherine French and Pat Walker, Danforth Art’s Director of Education.

These historically important exhibitions are visited each year by curators and collectors and are celebrated widely by art critics. Many of the works on view are available for purchase and will be available to preview in our online catalog this month.

We invite you to join us for a grand opening of these exhibitions—to view this exceptional art, to hear from many of the exhibiting artists, and to participate in hands-on activities related to works on view—all free of charge—on Sunday, June 8, at the Over the Moon Open House. A limited number of tickets are available for the exclusive Over the Moon Artist Gala on Saturday, June 7, and may be purchased in advance by calling 508-620-0050 ext. 10.

Why are we Over the Moon this year? Since 2007, Danforth Art has hosted a fabulous annual event called Over the Moon benefiting the Deborah D. Blumer Fund, in support of all educational programming at Danforth Art. This year, we have combined our benefit events into one grand celebration called Over the Moon. Now, we can celebrate the formation of an artist and the joy and practice of art-making. Our three-event weekend includes an invitation-only Over the Moon Patrons’ Preview on June 5, the exclusive Over the Moon Artist Gala on June 7, and free Over the Moon Open House on June 8. A portion of proceeds from these events will support the Deborah D. Blumer Fund and will provide vital arts education opportunities for artists of all ages. To learn more about opportunities to sponsor these events, or about the Deborah D. Blumer Fund, please visit our website.

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April 2014


Jon Imber, Portrait of Harold

Jon Imber, Portrait of Harold Imber, 1982. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Alpha Gallery, Boston.

Artist First and Foremost


As Sebastian Smee points out in his recent Boston Globe review of current shows related to Art and Healing at Danforth Art, creators of works on view, regardless of their relationship to illness, are first and foremost artists.” For Smee, the work of Jon Imber was particularly notable, a painter whose painting is “technically sure footed, but exploratory, audacious, and gut-loaded with articulate feeling.”

Portraits are at the center of Danforth Art’s current Jon Imber’s exhibition Carry On. Beginning with over-sized works done to commemorate his subjects, the artist’s paintings of his father Harold Imber and Philip Guston, the larger-than-life teacher with whom he studied at Boston University, were created from photographs after their deaths, allowing him to explore psychological relationships between biological and artistic fathers.  Monumental in both size and emotion, they are the cornerstone of a show that ends with a focus on portraiture, a survey of a career that spans more than four decades.

Imber is well versed in art history and demonstrates clear respect for what came before. Admiration of High Renaissance painters like Masaccio mix with his love for Picasso and Cezanne, but memory and emotion are at the center of his “carry paintings.” Almost shocking depictions of men carrying female lovers—more loving representations of fathers carrying sons on their backs and shoulder—make clear Imber’s acceptance, indeed embrace, of the weighty responsibility we feel for those we love.

His most recent work explores responsibility of a different kind—Imber’s determination to keep on painting despite a diagnosis of ALS. Portraits of family and friends created within the last year reveal sharp visual intelligence that no longer relies on facility, making them his most interesting and expressive work to date. “Each portrait communicates a bravura insight…” remarks Smee. But they are also heroic records of encounters of an artist confronting his past and present self.  

Upcoming Talks on the Art of Jon Imber

Free to Danforth Art members, and with paid museum admission

Wednesday, April 9, 12:30pm with Danforth Art Director Katherine French

Sunday, April 27, 3pm with Danforth Art Director Katherine French in conversation with Mt Holyoke College Art Museum Curator John Stomberg

Sunday, May 18, 3pm with artist Jill Hoy and Danforth Art Director Katherine French

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March 2014


Michael Mazur

Michael Mazur, The Occupant, from Images from a Locked Ward, 1965. Lithograph. Collection Danforth Art.

The Art of Michael B. Mazur:
Images from a Locked Ward

Artist Michael Mazur once said “the creative act is an act of imagination which applies to any choice of subject matter.” An inventive and revered painter and printmaker, Mazur is known for his profound depictions of human suffering. His series Images from a Locked Ward is currently on view at Danforth Art, one of the exhibitions on the theme “Art and Healing,” which document the physical and emotional burden of illness as well as power of pain, grief, and hope transformed.  

Mazur first came into prominence in the early 1960s with two series of etchings and lithographs depicting inmates in a mental asylum in Howard, Rhode Island, where had volunteered in an art therapy program. Images from a Locked Ward, a portfolio of 14 lithographs created with master printer George Lockwood, has been called Mazur’s “first artistic descent into Hell.” His prints were made from drawings he completed after his visits to the asylum; his inmates are tortured souls, imagined figures that seem to writhe and collapse on the page. The deeply humanistic series, and the accompanying Closed Ward etching series, have been described as Mazur’s “unqualified masterpiece.”

”These lost souls,” John Canaday wrote in The New York Times, “have the terrible anonymity of individuals who cannot be reached, whose ugly physical presence is only the symptom of a tragic spiritual isolation.”

In the late 1960s, Mazur worked briefly on a visual interpretation of Dante Inferno, the 14th century poet’s exploration of humanity’s fall from grace and rejection of sin. Although Mazur was drawn to literary themes, and in particular to Dante’s epic Divine Comedy, it would be almost thirty years before the artist visited the subject matter again. In 1992 Mazur learned that poet Robert Pinsky would be translating the cantos and approached the poet about a collaboration.  In a project that would become his best known work, Mazur and Pinsky collaborated on a complete, illustrated translation of Dante’s Inferno, making what he called“parallel translations.”

In an oral history interview with the Archives of American Art, Mazur observed that Pinsky’s translation was “absolutely without irony, with no attempt to make it topical or do anything than make it believable. And there was an attempt on my part to say, this is how it must have looked. In the kind of dialogue that artists and writers have with the past makes all art contemporary. But art exists in the moment of being seen or read. In real time it exists in the mind of the viewer.”

Born in New York in 1935, Mazur was educated at Horace Mann, received his BA from Amherst College, received both his BFA and MFA at Yale’s School of Art and Architecture, and was in residence at the American Academy in Rome. Internationally recognized, Mazur exhibited widely and his work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, NYC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Whitney Museum of Art, NYC. Mazur lived with his wife, poet Gail Mazur, in both Cambridge and Provincetown Massachusetts, and died in 2009.

Saturday, March 15 at 4pm: Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, and Mazur’s widow Gail Mazur will present a reading from their work in celebration of Michael Mazur’s life and work. The event is free to Danforth Art members, and with paid museum admission.

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February 2014


Purchase of Maynard Building

Back Row (L-R): Danforth Art Trustee Amy Rossi; Danforth Art Director of Finance, Operations, and Human Resources Mary Kiely; Framingham State University Executive Vice President of Administration, Finance, and Information Technology Dale Hamel; Danforth Art Trustee Nina Nielsen; Framingham Town Manager Robert Halpin; Framingham Town Finance Committee Member Betty Funk; Danforth Art Trustee Julia von Metzsch; and, Danforth Art Trustee Bob Murchison. Front Row (L-R): Attorney Michael Gatlin; Danforth Art Honorary Trustee & Founding Member Judy Riegelhaupt; Danforth Art Executive Director Katherine French; Framingham Town Selectman Dennis Giombetti; Framingham Town Selectman Laurie Lee; and, Framingham Town Selectman Charlie Sisitsky.

Danforth Art Purchases Building–
A Collaborative Effort

Attorney Michael G. Gatlin of the Law Offices of Michael G. Gatlin felt privileged to represent Danforth Art in its purchase of the historic Jonathan Maynard Building. The transaction was unique, even for a lawyer with extensive experience in real estate. For Gatlin, the case proved interesting. 

Danforth Art’s agreement called for purchase of property with both cash and community service. Our commitment to pay $1M and offer $500,000 in free services to the Town is a somewhat complicated arrangement, but also calls attention to an exceptional partnership. However, as part of a larger parcel, the property first had to be subdivided prior to sale; and, since the Maynard Building sat on registered land, the process grew even more complex. Gatlin enjoyed working closely with the Town to resolve interesting challenges in what he called “a cooperative transaction.” It was a truly a “win-win.”   

As a Framingham resident and longtime Danforth Art supporter, Gatlin knew that everyone would benefit from the Museum and School being able to realize a permanent home in the historic Town Centre. “Danforth Art is a wonderful and important community asset,” Gatlin observed. “The presence of this first-rate museum in Framingham strengthens and sustains this community. Everyone wanted this project to move forward.”  

And Danforth Art is moving forward. Purchase of the Maynard Building represents a solution to long standing facility issues experienced at our current, municipally-owned location on Union Avenue and provides stability for the future. Danforth Art Trustees have formed a Building Committee to plan renovation of Maynard Building and a Strategic Planning Committee to engage the community in helping envision and plan our future move.  More than one member of the Board has remarked that Danforth Art’s governing body has been “galvanized.”

We are grateful for the past and continued support of all those who helped get us to this point, and look forward to becoming an even stronger cultural resource for those within New England and beyond. We so appreciate our members, studio art students and donors to our Annual Fund. However, we ask those who would like to do more to please contact our new Director of Development Cynthia Kouré at ckoure@www.danforthart.org or (508) 620-0050 ext 41. We look forward to the year ahead.

Note: Special for Framingham residents (with valid I.D. or proof of residency)! Framingham residents enjoy free admission on Saturday mornings from 10 am to 12 noon or 20% off purchase of Danforth Art membership at any level rate, which provides free museum admission, discounts on studio art classes, invitations to special members-only events and much more!  We encourage Framingham residents to take advantage of these great opportunities.

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January 2014


John Wilson, Head of Martin Luther King, Jr.

John Wilson, Head of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1982, Bronze. Photo: Dana Salvo, courtesy of Martha Richardson Fine Arts

An Eternal Presence at Danforth Art


Visitors to our 2012 retrospective John Wilson: Eternal Presence were struck by the power and command of the artist’s sculptural portrait of the late Martin Luther King, Jr. This piece has remained on extended loan after close of the exhibition last March and we’re now thrilled to announce our commitment to acquire Wilson’s Head of Martin Luther King, Jr. for our permanent collection, creating lasting connections to significant aspects of our nation’s cultural and social history.

On January 25, 2013, just moments after he stepped from the podium at his second inauguration, President Barack Obama paused before another sculpture of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Capitol rotunda, a moment of silent contemplation with powerful symbolic resonance. The 36-inch bronze bust of the Civil Rights leader was commissioned in 1982 to memorialize King’s sociopolitical contributions. As the selected sculptor, John Wilson was praised for the work’s peaceful, reflective tone, its intense gaze and its powerful composition. Part of a series of portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., this marked a high point in the illustrious career Roxbury-born artist John Wilson. 

One of the many talented students who studied under Karl Zerbe at Boston’s Museum School during the 1940s, Wilson also studied with Leger in Paris and muralist painters in Mexico during the 1950s before returning to teach at Boston University.  Drawn to the monumental Buddhist heads at the MFA, Wilson was able to connect them to the African art he had seen at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, as well as the colossal Olmec heads of central Mexico. These inspired him to create a monumental, black head that might broadly represent humanity and challenge the viewer.  “It had to be a black head,” he has stated emphatically.  “It had to be made out of bronze, a head that could be dug up in a thousand years and still make an impact.”

Gradually Wilson’s work evolved next to include imagined portraits of Martin Luther King, commemorating the late Civil Rights leader as an “eternal presence.” Preparatory drawings earned commissions for several large sculptures at the Museum of African American Artists in Roxbury; for an MLK Jr. monument in Buffalo, NY; and finally, for the MLK Jr. bust in Washington’s U.S. Capitol Building.  Wilson’s Head of Martin Luther King, Jr. (to be acquired by Danforth Art), along with other drawings and paintings of the slain Civil Rights leader on extended loan to the museum, are currently on view in Danforth Art’s Landman Gallery in close proximity to sculptural portraits by the African-American artist Meta Warrick Fuller.  

To learn more about how you might contribute to making this sculpture and other works by African-American artists an eternal presence at Danforth Art, please contact development associate Gabrielle McKenzie by calling 508-620-0050, ext. 10 or at gmckenzie@www.danforthart.org.

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October 2013


Porfirio DiDonna, Naples

Porfirio DiDonna, Naples, 1985, Oil on linen.
Private Collection

The Shape of Knowing


When Nielsen Gallery closed its Newbury Street doors in June 2009, artists and collectors across the country mourned the public absence of directors John Baker and Nina Nielsen. These significant contributors to the Boston art scene represented such dynamic painters as John Walker, Katherine Porter, and MacArthur Fellow Joan Snyder, as well as the estates of renowned artists Gregory Gillespie and Porfirio DiDonna. Historically important solo shows featuring Forest Bess, Jay DeFeo, and Jackson Pollack won Baker and Nielsen critical acclaim, as well as awards from the International Association of Art Critics. After more than 46 years in business, the couple had certainly earned their retirement; however, retirement would be neither quiet nor inactive.

As co-curators of A Painter’s Journey, a solo exhibition of work by Porfirio DiDonna currently on view in Danforth Art’s main galleries, both Baker and Nielsen have been busy and engaged. By selecting works that explore rituals of mark-making and the painter’s religious and spiritual sensibilities, they have well prepared us for the release of Baker’s new book on the life and work of this important artist. Writer Addison Parks observed that Porfirio DiDonna The Shape of Knowing takes us “step for step, mark for mark…on a journey of form and meaning."

Danforth Art is extraordinarily pleased to host two special events in celebration of the exhibition and book publication on Sunday, Oct. 20. A reading by John Baker, followed by conversation with poet, essayist, and publisher Bill Corbett will take place in Danforth Art’s Auditorium at 3 pm. John Baker will sign copies of his book in our main galleries at 4 pm, surrounded by Porfirio DiDonna’s paintings. His partner and co-curator Nina Nielsen will be also speak briefly about the work.

As always, events are free with Museum Memberships or paid admission. However, reservations and advance purchase of the book are highly recommended.

SPECIAL EVENTS
Porfirio DiDonna The Shape of Knowing
Sunday, October 20, 3-5pm

3pm: Book Reading and Conversation in Danforth Art Auditorium
Author John Baker reads from Porfirio DiDonna The Shape of Knowing and engages in conversation with poet, essayist, and publisher William Corbett. 75 seats available, reservations suggested, call 508-620-0050, ext. 10.

4pm: Book Signing
Author John Baker sign copies of his new book Porfirio DiDonna The Shape of Knowing. To purchase advance copies, call 508-620-0050, ext. 15.

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September 2013


From New England Photo Biennial 2013: Steve Duede, Evanescent I (detail), Photograph, C inkjet print, 16" x 24"

You don’t have to read much further than the first sentence of Mark Feeney’s recent Boston Globe review to know that “It’s been a good time for juried photography shows.” Summer exhibitions at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University and the Griffin Museum of Photography displayed the quality and depth local photography. This fall, Danforth Art continues the trend, presenting the New England Photography Biennial, with 76 images by 44 photographers, selected by juror Francine Weiss.

Though at first pass the variety of submissions might mask cohesiveness, unifying themes in subject matter and process emerge. Complementary dualities of subject put works in conversation with each other. The sublimity of nature communes with distinctive built environments; the intimate character of discarded objects pairs with implied narratives of empty spaces.

The exhibition’s narrative expands beyond the frame, and Weiss notes the “emphasis on the ‘photograph-as-object’ in the installation and mixed media works, as well as in the photographs made using alternative processes.” Visitors learn about a variety of photographic processes and techniques—photocollage, photomontage, ambrotype, silver gelatin, wet plate collodion, cameraless photographs, in-camera multiple exposures, and Polaroid images—that chronicle the medium’s history.

From the earliest days of the camera-obscura to modern digital photography, works on view represent the range of over 1,200 image submissions and the current trends in photography in New England.  “The experience of seeing so much good work,” says Weiss, “is humbling, educational, and inspiring,” proving, once again, that it is a very good time for juried photography shows.

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August 2013


Teen Docents in action!

Merrill Comeau

Artist Merrill Comeau working with Danforth Art Teen Docents

What accomplishment are you most proud of? That’s what Assistant Curator of Education Amy Briggs asked the incoming group of Teen Docents during their interviews. “How a candidate answers that question reveals so much about self-confidence and personal goals,” says Briggs. “Many of the new Teen Docents started out so shy and nervous but by their first tour, they had already grown immensely.”

The newest Danforth Art Teen Docents, representing eight local high schools, participated in three-week intensive training earlier this summer. Briggs led morning sessions, where Teen Docents discussed body language cues, Visual Thinking Strategies, and age-group and audience considerations. In the afternoons, Merill Comeau, a mixed-media artist exhibiting at Danforth Art in winter 2014, taught Teen Docents various paint applications and fabric construction methods for a collaged artwork of recycled materials. Comeau, who often works with fabric, says the medium allowed Teen Docents to explore the role of memory and personal identity “because fabric is essential to our daily lives: we sleep in linens, we dress in clothes, and we mark life’s passages with special textiles.”

Each Thursday this summer, Teen Docents led Summer Arts students in discussion-based tours and received mentoring from adult Docents. Armed with beach balls and creative questions—“Stand in front of the artwork you’d most like to see in your bedroom!”—the Teen Docents debunked the idea that museums aren’t fun.  When asked the program highlight so far, the Teen Docents were unanimous—giving tours in the galleries.

Read more about the Teen Docent program.

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June 2013


Celebrate Juneteenth with Danforth Art!


Students with Meta Fuller

Boston Renaissance Charter School students Wandaly Ortiz Guerrero and Kaila Williams-Pena with Meta Warrick Fuller’s unfired clay study for The Spirit of Emancipation.

Free admission in honor of The Spirit of Emancipation Sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller. Today, June 19th, is Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Honor emancipation history with a visit to Danforth Art’s collection of Meta Warrick Fuller sculptures, including Figures in Hand, the unfired clay study for The Spirit of Emancipation, a bronze statue anchoring Harriet Tubman Park in Boston’s South End.  Learn more about Emancipation celebrations in this great article recently featured on The Root.

"The study for Emancipation was crafted in 1913, making this a 100-year anniversary for a remarkable body of work” said Katherine French, Danforth Art Executive Director. Danforth Art’s holdings include bronze sculptures, plaster busts, tools, preparatory drawings, and other ephemera from Meta Fuller’s estate and studio, comprising the largest collection of Fuller’s work.  Highlights from the collection are currently on view in Portraits, an intimate exhibition pairing Fuller with the contemporary artist John Wilson.

“Meta Fuller’s work is central to our permanent collection and Juneteenth is a wonderful occasion to celebrate a prominent and talented African-American artist,” said French “She was a Framingham resident, a protegee of Rodin, a friend of W.E.B. duBois, and a supporter of Marcus Garvey,” French adds, “Thanks to generous individual support, Danforth Art may share Meta Fuller’s extraordinary legacy to a brand new community of visitors.”

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May 2013


Summer is a wonderful time to be more creative!


Our largest semester for children’s classes is the Summer Arts for Children program, where kids can be creative in our air-conditioned studios.  Our youngest students create 2-D and 3-D art in classes that explore different themes each week, such as Beach Party, Under the Sea or World Traveler. Children choose from a variety of techniques, including drawing, painting, and our very popular clay classes.

Teen Portfolio classes are taught by working artists and college instructors from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Rhode Island College, Montserrat College of Art, Framingham State University and Mass College of Art and Design. During portfolio review days, a representative from a local university commented on one teen’s improved observational drawing skills after taking classes with Danforth Art, and how important this is for acceptance into art school.  Classes in drawing, painting, clay and printmaking are offered this summer.

We are looking forward to seeing more adults here this summer because we are offering more classes and workshops than ever before.  Some of our students are accomplished artists who return again and again to sharpen their skills or to be pushed to a new level, fitting a week-long class into their vacation schedule.  One exciting new class, En Plein Air Painting, will be taught by master artist George Nick, whose work is currently on view in the Museum. But there are many others to choose from!

Register online today or call the School office at 508-620-0937.

We look forward to seeing you at Danforth Art this summer!

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April 2013


Mark of Truth
Reed Kay, Painting Retrospective, 1953-2004

April 7-May 24, 2013

High Clouds on the Charles, 1989, oil/panel.
Courtesy of Jane and George Fogg.

Although artist Reed Kay was one of the many talented students who studied under Karl Zerbe at Boston’s Museum School during the 1940s, his work has a radically different look than many others of his generation. Unlike his close friends and classmates David Aronson, Jason Berger, and others, later known as Boston Expressionists, Kay developed a painterly style that relied on close observation. Leaving his studio to paint landscapes en plein air in the 1950s, he never looked back. 

The fifty-seven paintings on view as part of Kay’s career retrospective, now at Danforth Art, are not just stunning examples of what can happen when a painter spends his entire career considering the effects of color and light.  They are also a faithful record of the New England landscape. From the streets of Boston to the boatyards of Gloucester, Kay was fascinated by a visual truth realized by looking carefully. Working in the tradition of such painters as Constable, Corot, and Pissarro, Kay constructed his pictures in a style that employed painterly mark-making to accurately represent his experience of a particular time and place.

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March 2013


Pictures Tell the Story


Andrew Glass, Moby Dick: Chasing the Great White Whale

Special guest to this year’s Over the Moon is Andrew Glass, whose original illustrations for Moby Dick: Chasing the Great White Whale are on view in our Children’s Gallery as part of our third collaboration with the 2013 Framingham Reads Together Program. This year’s town-wide literacy effort centers around Nathaniel Philbrick’s novel In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Danforth’s new exhibition presents everyone, pre-readers and non-English speakers alike, with opportunities to participate.
 
Glass creates pictures that tell the story. Melville’s epic novel has been transformed into a sea shanty by author Eric Kimmel. Vibrant oil and pencil illustrations by Glass make it possible for even very young children to “read” this complex tale of the high seas.

Author and illustrator of many books for children, Glass is known for a singular, distinct style. His numerous books about American folklore include such colorful figures as Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane to Billy the Kid. He has also illustrated The Erie Canal Pirates by Eric Kimmel and the Newbery Honor books, Graven Images: Three Stories by Paul Fleischman and The Wish Giver: Three Tales of Coven Tree by Bill Brittain.

Selected Events
Framingham Reads Together Program
Saturday, March 23

10 am: Fuller Middle School Auditorium:  Acclaimed Nantucket author Nathaniel Philbrick will speak about his book and the research/writing process, followed by book signing for Heart of the Sea. For more information, call the Main Library, 508-532-5570. Free and open to the public.

1-2 pm: Danforth Museum of Art: Book Signing with Children’s Picture Book Illustrator Eric Glass for Moby Dick: Chasing the Great White Whale. Book signing and free admission to museum.  For more information, 508-620-0050, ext. 15.

8-9 pm: Danforth Museum of Art: Book Signing with Eric Glass as part of Over the Moon. Ticketed event. 
For more information, 508-620-0050, ext. 15.

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February 2013


HIVE of Activity

Working together to create community

Danforth Teen Docents and local Somerville artist Jodi Colella join forces to create work now on view at the Danforth.

When Danforth Teen Docents met with artist Jodi Colella at Regis College’s Carney Gallery in December to view Colella’s mixed media sculpture exhibit “Constructed,” they not only encountered a vibrant, innovative artist whose work unites design, science and tradition, but also the chance to work with her. Colella enjoys incorporating a sense of community into her work and her ongoing HIVE project is a perfect example. 

With assistance from Danforth Education Intern Megan McCarney and Teen Docents, Colella brought HIVE to the Danforth.  HIVE is a collaborative group project that explores the chemistry between people when they work together with hands busy and minds free. Throughout the month of January, McCarney and Teen Docents worked with large pieces of window screen and metal wire (favorite mediums of the artist) to cut, fray, and stitch together a multilayered composition that’s truly unique and has allowed Colella to think about her process in new ways.  “Watching [the Teen Docents] create reminds me about how boundless the imagination can be and to…always try to push the boundaries.”

HIVE pushed the boundaries for young people given the opportunity to work with an artist for the first time.  Teen Docent Sam Light found that he developed “a deeper way to connect with an artist and talk to her about her work” and Teen Docent Forest Hall called it “a tremendously rewarding and insightful experience.”  Equally important was the camaraderie the group experienced while working together to create something uniquely their own, revealing a collaborative facet often found in contemporary art making. 

For Colella, this social element is just as important to as a finished product and Teen Docent Jake Collins agrees.  “Although we were focusing on working with different materials,” observes Collins, “we were also always laughing and enjoying the time getting to know each other.”

Collaboration between artist Jodi Colella, Danforth Teen Intern Megan McCarney and Danforth Teen Docents will be on view though Sunday, March 24.

Related Media

Photo Gallery of artist Jodi Collela and the Danforth Teen Docents in action

Jodi Collela's Blog

hive final from Chris LeGare on Vimeo.

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January 2013


Hot Music for Cold Days


Richard Yarde Story Time

Hot music floated out of the Swartz Gallery on a cold day last Sunday.  Young visitors to our January Drop into Art not only saw vibrant watercolors by artist and music lover Richard Yarde. They also heard the jazz that inspired his 1982 installation of the Savoy Ballroom. Museum educator Kathleen Berger read from Stomping at the Savoy, a 2006 picture book illustrated by Yarde and played swing era music by jazz legend Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Chick Webb that Yarde describes in his book.  Closing their eyes, young visitors could imagine what it was like in the dancing palace that inspired Yarde, a place where blacks and whites, rich and poor, all came together to dance and celebrate.

Music also inspires original illustrations created for Rabbit’s Snow Dance, now on view upstairs in our Children’s Gallery.  This story of a rabbit who loves winter and uses a traditional Iroquois drum and song to make it snow perfectly integrations art and music as a new component of our Native American Program, with brand new exhibits and public school tours.  From more information about how to sign up for these and other educational programs, please contact Educational Curator Amy Briggs at 508-620-0060, ext. 23 or at abriggs@www.danforthart.org.

Thanks to funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, we’ll be able to share these great new exhibitions and programs to a wider audience with free admission as follows:  

Free Super Saturdays from January 19 through March 26, 10am-12pm
Free Thursday Evenings from January 24 through March 14, 5pm-8pm
Free Martin Luther King Family Day, Monday, January 21, 1pm-4pm
Free Presidents Day Family Day, Monday, February 18, 1pm-4pm    

Children’s Books of Interest Now Available in the Museum Shop
Stompin’ at the Savoy Illustrated by Richard Yarde
Happy Feet Illustrated by E.B. Lewis
Rabbit’s Snow Dance Illustrated by Jeff Newman

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December 2012


Richard Yarde, The Apartment, 1993, watercolor. 
Collection, Danforth Museum of Art, recent acquisition. 
Gift of Ellen Wineberg in memory of Richard Yarde.

Richard Yarde: Selected Work

Given the interest in our John Wilson: Eternal Presence, the Danforth is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by one of Wilson’s former colleagues who taught with him on the faculty at Boston University.  Richard Yarde: Selected Work provides a glimpse into Yarde’s concern with physical, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual healing. From the portrayals of African American icons to explorations of his own illness, Yarde’s virtuosity watercolors encompass a wide range of the human experience: from isolation to perseverance, triumph, and pure joy.

Like Wilson, Richard Yarde was raised in the Roxbury neighborhood of urban Boston and was a major presence in the art world both in New England and nationwide. Critics have written—and Yarde concured—that his body of work was an exploration of his own history. Early on he painted with joy and verve. He would splash the Roxbury neighborhood where he grew up in the 1950s on large sheets of paper, then turn to rendering imagined scenes from the vibrant jazz world of the Harlem Renaissance.  He tackled the traditionally intimate art of watercolor with uncharacteristic bravado. Unlike oil or acrylic painting, watercolor brooks no mistakes, but Yarde chose to paint on a heroic scale with dazzling color, rich symbols and deeply evocative imagery. Later, as his own illness became a dominant factor in his life, it also became one in his painting. Imagery of fragmentation (like the gridwork of his trademark style) led to themes of healing and integration. Boldly and on a grand scale, Richard Yarde took the disparate elements of our American culture, past and present and our intellectual heritage.  He successfully demonstrated that culture and history can sometimes mesh with an individual’s personal journey to integrate into a cohesive whole. Richard’s artistic journey is a journey of self, as well as one of American consciousness.

Solo and group exhibitions throughout the country have featured his paintings, which reside permanently in nearly three dozen public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  Thanks to the generosity of one of his former students, Yarde’s watercolor The Apartment, painted in 1993, was recently acquired for the Danforth’s permanent collection and is part of the exhibition Richard Yarde: Selected Work, which is on view in the Swartz Gallery through Sunday, March 24.

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November 2012


Martin Luther King, Jr., 2002
etching and aquatint with chine collé
20 x 16 inches

Courtesy of the artist and
Center Street Studio

John Wilson: Eternal Presence

The Danforth is pleased to present John Wilson: Eternal Presence, a retrospective of drawings, paintings, prints and sculpture by a remarkable artist whose career has spanned nearly seven decades. 

Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1922, Wilson was one of the many talented students who studied under Karl Zerbe at the Museum School in Boston during the 1940’s, part of a group that later became known as Boston Expressionists.  But Wilson’s art cannot be viewed solely through an expressive lens. Instead, the trajectory of his work directs us to a complex exploration of the changing artistic and social landscape as it developed over the course of the last century.

A prestigious Traveling Scholars Fellowship from the Museum School allowed Wilson to work in Fernand Léger’s Paris studio, where he became acquainted with Modernism first hand. Politically and artistically inspired by the Mexican muralists, he then traveled to Mexico where he lived and worked during the 1950’s as part of the Taller de Grafica Popular, an artist’s collaborative, which built on Mexico’s strong printmaking tradition to advance social causes.  Returning to the United States, he worked briefly in New York before joining other Museum School alumni on the arts faculty at Boston University. 

It was at Boston University that Wilson began work on imagined portraits of the Martin Luther King, memorializing the late Civil Rights leader as an “eternal presence.”  Wilson went on to complete commissions for memorial sculptures and prints which appear in the Capital Rotunda in Washington, DC and in public locations and museums across the country. Collaborating with master printer James Stroud at Center Point Studio on illustrations for the work of Harlem Renaissance writer Richard Wright, Wilson has continued working to the present day—a master artist whose work is celebrated nationally.

Member’s reception for the Artist:  Saturday, November 17 from 6-8 pm.
Show opens to the Public: Sunday, November 18

Conversation with Jim Stroud and John Wilson
Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 3 pm
Master Printer Jim Stroud and Artist John Wilson
in conversation about their print collaborations at
Center Street Studio. 

Special Family Open House Days
Sponsored by Bernardi Auto Group
Gallery tours, hands-on art activities and more

Martin Luther King Day Family Open House
Monday, January 21, 2013, 1-4 pm 
Sponsored by Bernardi Auto Group

President's Day Family Open House
Monday, February 18, 2013, 1-4 pm
Sponsored by Bernardi Auto Group
  

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October 2012


Ilana Manolson, Fragile Navigation, 2012. Courtesy of the Artist.

Fragile Navigation

Maps suggest ways to move from one place to another--ideas that are of particular interest now as the Danforth considers relocating to another facility.  In our current exhibition Fragile Navigation, exhibiting artists Thaddeus Beal, Ilana Manolson, Rhonda Smith, and Adrienne Der Marderosian have all incorporated actual maps or reference imagined space.  For most of us, maps are tools for planning a future course of action.  In the hands of these talented artists, they are a source for inspired image making.

Stretching over the back two walls of the Swartz Gallery, artist Ilana Manolson presents a multimedia work that gives the exhibition its name. As a site specific installation, Fragile Navigation incorporates scans from actual historic maps in Boston Public Library’s archives, as well as tree roots collected from the woods near the artist’s home. An earlier version of this work entitled Terra Flow was exhibited at the Copley Square Branch as part of the BPL’s ReThink Ink exhibition and is now permanently installed as part of library’s permanent collection. Harbour Maps, another similar piece, is on view at the Concord Art Association through October 14th.
Cartography is also central in the charcoal drawings of Thaddeus Beal.  Although Beal did not set out to literally draw maps, he found that his work began to evolve in that direction.  Rhonda Smith’s paintings are more abstract, yet scientifically based in her consideration of tectonic shift.  And Adrienne Der Marderosian’s Tattoo Trails ponders our collective navigation through life.  Seen together, works in this exhibition argue that we might not only share the same physical space, but also a similar emotional need to figure out where we have been and where we might be going. 

Artist Ilana Manolson will speak:
Wednesday, October 10 at 12 pm 
Saturday, October 27 at 2 pm

Concurrent exhibitions of Manolson’s work:
Terra Flow, purchased for the Boston Public Library’s permanent collection and permanently on view in the Johnson Lobby at the Copley Square Branch, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA. For more information visit, www.bpl.org.

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September 2012


Stau
Marcela Staudenmaier, Good Morning, 3-D paper collage, 2011.
Courtesy of the artist. Part of Picture This!, up now through November 4.
Juried by Carol Goldenberg.

Picture This!

The Danforth’s 2012 Picture This! exhibition showcases work by twenty-one  contemporary artists working in the field of children’s picture book illustration.   Carol Goldenberg, former art director for Houghton Mifflin and designer of five Caldecott Medal winning picture books, juried this year’s show.

Picture books offer children their first exposure to art, and they provide a first opportunity to understand their world in visual terms. Infants and toddlers learn words and how to construct sentences when parents read to them. They also learn about color, shapes, and line by looking at pictures in their favorite books.  They learn that art can “tell a story” through sequential imagery. Picture books are not only an important tool for lifelong learning, but also a source of pleasure for parents and children alike.

The Danforth’s Children’s Gallery, located on the second floor of the Museum, is dedicated to the art of picture book illustration and continually shows original work by children’s illustrators. For more information visit Picture This! to view an online catalog of our current show.

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July 2012


Cindy A. Stephens
Haverhill, MA, 2010
Archival print
Community of Artists, 2012

Danforth’s Growing Community
Loan Opportunities for Artists

Traditionally museums have focused on historically important art, but that model is changing. Here at the Danforth, contemporary artists play an increasingly important role. While we display their work and acquire it for our permanent collection, we also welcome artists as insightful viewers and as teachers and students in studio art classes. More than one third of our members are working artists, and from now through August 5, visitors will be able to consider the creativity of members showcased in our current Off the Wall  and Community of Artists shows.

 “Perhaps by [Cody] Hartley’s seasoned eye, personal preferences or pure instinct, this Off the Wall is one of the strongest, most exciting exhibits shown in the Danforth over recent years,” writes Chris Bergeron in a review in MetroWest Daily News. “…the paintings, prints, photos, installations, and other boundary-bending works are fresh, striking, and often dazzling to the eye and imagination.” Reviews like this and in Art New England pay tribute to the highly talented artists engaged in this Museum.

Artists in the Danforth community have also played important roles in strategic planning discussions related to our relocation and renaming the Museum. Now town officials have informed us that low- to moderate-income loans are available for artists interested in acquiring property in Framingham—ideally the downtown area. Living and working close to the Danforth offers artists many advantages. For starters, they would be supporting economic revitalization in a community that would eagerly welcome them. Both member and nonmember artists can respond through the Town of Framingham’s website or by contacting Framingham’s Office of Community Development directly at (508) 532-5457.

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June 2012


Pamela Bearor-Amiralian
 Humanities Expansion, 2011
2nd Prize Winner, Off the Wall, 2012

Think Globally, Buy Locally…

Danforth juried exhibitions not only place new and emerging artists next to established artists, but also provide opportunities for collectors. Most of the art in the Off the Wall and Community of Artists is for sale, and many pieces sold at our recent Patron’s Preview. One new collector purchased his first piece of art, while other established collectors added to their growing private collections. 

One critic, Chris Bergeron of the MetroWest Daily News, commented that the work currently on view is “boundary-bending…fresh, striking and often dazzling to the eye and imagination,” and terms Off the Wall as “one of the strongest, most exciting exhibits shown in the Danforth over recent years.” This is one of many reviews the Danforth has received over the years for its juried exhibitions—unusual for large group shows.

However, with 103 works from 80 artists in Off the Wall, and 153 works from 133 artists in Community of Artists, we are certain these shows are exceptional, and the arts community has become increasingly aware of their significance. Each summer, the Danforth is visited by curators and collectors interested in the work displayed in these shows—a sign that the Museum has become a venue  not only for historically important exhibits, but also for new and exciting contemporary art that finds its way into other museums and private collections. 

Hartley’s “seasoned eye, personal preferences or pure instinct” make Off the Wall outstanding. Thinking of “surround” as he chose works that range thematically from the organic and biomorphic to mechanical and manmade, Hartley observed that “a lot of artists give insight into this world—how we see beauty in places we might not be looking.” 

All of the work in the two shows can be viewed in our online catalogs. While many museums pursue a global focus, the Danforth is committed to artists living and working in the immediate community— proof again that we need look no further than our own backyard to discover some of the best contemporary art being produced today. Support this talent by purchasing original art.
Become part of the conversation.

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May 2012


Myrna Beecher, Roses
Oil on panel, 6"x6", 2010
Featured in Community of Artists, 2012

A Community of Museums

The Rose Art Museum is still with us—a cause for real celebration during Museum Month.  Join us at 3 pm on Sunday, May 13th when renowned critic Francine Koslow Miller will discuss her new book Cashing in on Culture: Betraying the Trust at the Rose Art Museum. Koslow’s personal and factual account of Brandeis University’s attempt to sell the invaluable collection of contemporary art housed at its college art museum is a compelling story for everyone in the museum community—and a cautionary tale about permanent collections of art.
While impossible to judge another institution, especially during tough financial times, we can speak to what happens at the Danforth. As a non profit, we’re charged with serving the public good.  As an art museum, we fulfill this obligation by preserving, promoting and presenting art.  This is what we do, and what we’ll continue to do—regardless of economic challenge. Art can be bought and sold, but its real value lies in its ability to inspire us to think beyond our immediate situation.  Troubled times demand creative solutions, and we need look no further than work displayed in our galleries or created within studio art classes to see valuable evidence of creative thinking.     

Over the past year, collectors have gifted major works to the Danforth because they trust that we will care for art in our permanent collection.  Nearly 500 artists recently entered annual juried shows because they trust in our ability to value and interpret creative effort.  Parents enroll children in studio art classes because they trust that we will nurture artistic development.  We value this trust, which lies at the very heart of all that we do.  Nearly 40 years ago we made a promise that art housed at the Danforth would be public and accessible.  And, together with other institutions in the museum community, this is a promise we intend to keep.

Francine Koslow Miller will speak on her new book
Cashing in on Culture: Betraying the Trust at the Rose Art Museum.
Author Talk and Book Signing at the Danforth-Sunday, May 13 at 3 pm    

  

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April 2012


Teen Docent leading tour of Off The Wall, 2011

Off the Wall

Over the past few weeks there has been a flurry of activity here as both emerging and established artists make final preparations for entry into Off the Wall and Community of Artists.  Since more than one third of our current members identify themselves as working artists, response from within the Danforth community is strong and interest is growing among those who’ve not previously been acquainted with the Museum.  Many are especially excited by the opportunity to have work reviewed by Cody Hartley, who has agreed to serve as this year’s juror.

Formally Assistant Curator and now Director of Gifts of Art at the MFA, Cody Hartley contributed to installation of the new Americas wing and as author to several MFA publications.  Prior to joining the MFA, he was Assistant Curator of American Art at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute in Williamstown, MA and joins a long list of distinguished curators who have served as jurors for Off the Wall, who include Nick Capasso (DeCordova); Carole Anne Meehan and Helen Molesworth (both ICA); Jen Mergel (MFA) and Susan Stoops (WAM).    

Juried exhibitions at the Danforth help establish careers.  Work from past shows has been selected for other museum exhibits, purchased by private collectors, or helped artists find gallery representation. Off the Wall and Community of Artists represent the Danforth at its best—proof that we need look no further than our own back yard to discover great work. While many museums pursue a global focus, the Danforth is committed to its immediate community.  Each year we showcase some of the very best contemporary work being produced within New England—and beyond—and invite everyone to participate in this exciting activity.

How you can take part:

  • Artists - Submit your work by Friday, April 13
  • Supporters - Become Patrons by calling 508-620-0050, ext. 16. 
  • Everyone - View selected work by visiting the shows from June 3 - August 5    

  

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March 2012


Exquisite Collaborations On View


Untitled #19, Boston Ten Collective

Untitled #19, Boston Ten Collective Promised Gift of the Artists

The Danforth began life as a community organization, and now after more than thirty-five years of serving its many constituent members—families, artists and museum goers of all ages—this continues to be the case. Collaboration is key to all that we do, and two new exhibits perfectly demonstrate an approach that makes us unique.

Edie Read: A Space Opens Up represents a nearly 18 month collaboration between the artist Edie Read and independent curator Judith Hoos Fox. This installation of architecturally-inspired sculpture invites visitors to walk between brightly painted forms that hang from the ceiling, providing an opportunity to physically interact with art.

A different kind of collaboration is on view in Boston Ten and Beyond, which includes selections from 113 works by twenty-four individual artists who have donated the entire collection to the Danforth. A blend of respective styles, these unique pieces walk the line between the real and surreal; an interest in pop or graphic novel; or delicate washes of color set against an embrace of thickly painted expressionism.

Collaboration began in 2006 when friends gathered at the home of artist Morgan Bulkeley and began experimenting with a popular game played in 1920’s Paris called “exquisite corpse.”  By sharing and interacting with each other’s works, these Massachusetts artists realized a central tenant of the philosophy of artists who had come before—the power of the collective subconscious.

Art critic Nicolas Calas observed that poetic fragments created by French Surrealists reveal the "unconscious reality in the personality of the group" and fulfill an injunction that “poetry must be made by all and not just one.” Works created by Bulkeley and his friends explore accidental juxtapositions that are puzzling, comic and surprisingly beautiful while demonstrating both an awareness of Modernist tradition, as well as a 1960’s generational desire to work in a collaborative way.

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February 2012


Polar Bear Son
Detail of The Polar Bear Son
Image Courtesy of Meral and Wendy Dabcovich

Polar Bear Son
A Story of a Mysterious World

“Kunikdjuaq…was a friendly, round and fluffy little bear, and the children of the village love to play with him, tumbling about and sliding in the snow….”

Third grade students visiting the Museum this winter will especially enjoy The Polar Bear Son, an exhibit of original artwork by Lydia Dabcovich from her picture book retelling of an Inuit folktale about an old Eskimo-Inuit woman who adopts an orphan polar bear cub to provide food in the unforgiving climate of the frozen north.  These delicate, beautifully rendered watercolors are a wonderful addition to our regular collaboration with area public schools that uses art to expand social studies curriculum.  The Danforth’s Native American Program regularly uses artifacts from our permanent collection such as mukluks (Inuit fur boots) and a sealskin parka to teach about life in another culture.  However, this year we are pleased to include three carved Inuit sculptures, recently donated by a Wellesley resident, as part of the exhibition Polar Bear Son.

Interest in this exhibit has not been limited to family visitors.  Many adults have been drawn to simple, powerful shapes of Inuit sculpture, as well as the mythical power in found in the picture book illustrations. Artist Lydia Dabcovich was so inspired by her reading of Franz Boaz and other anthropologists that she used the story of the polar bear son Kunikdjuaq (pronounced koo-nick-joo-uck) to convey a mysterious world filled with powerful animals, strong hunters and supernatural beings.

This sense of a visionary landscape is consistent with work visitors will see in other galleries, and perhaps with good reason.  A graduate of Boston’s Museum School, along with many Boston Expressionists featured in The Expressive Voice, Dabcovich was interested in using art to convey a sense of things unseen, but deeply felt.  Although whimsical, illustrations of Polar Bear Son have much in common with Hyman Bloom’s supernatural painting of fish in a feeding frenzy.  We invite our visitors to make the comparison, and tell us what they think.  

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January 2012


Hyman Bloom
Hyman Bloom, Seascape II, 1974
Collection Danforth Museum of Art
Gift of Dagmar and Ephraim Friedman

“Seascape II’’ (1974) teems with red and blue fish in a terrifying eddy, jaws wide, consuming one another. Their scales shimmer amid ripples of water - the paint handling is masterful - spinning in an endless vortex of devouring.
- Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe

Increasing numbers of visitors have found their way to the Danforth in the past month, prompted by critical reviews that describe the “an emotional clarity” of work that is “luscious, bright and deeply felt.” Hyman Bloom’s “Seascape II” (1974) is a perfect example of work that visitors will see in our exhibit The Expressive Voice.   Like many Boston Expressionist paintings, it depicts “the messiness of life,” challenging our received notion of art late twentieth century art. 

Although a first generation immigrant without much formal education, the artist Hyman Bloom was widely read and fully knowledgeable of the many cultural references to his subject matter. He knew that Greeks and Romans considered fish sacred, and was acquainted with the Christian story of the loaves and fishes.  A great admirer of Indian Music, he knew that Vishnu transformed himself into a fish to save the World.  But for Bloom, the most important connection was to Jewish philosophy and 20th century psychoanalysis. Fish were not only a good subject matter. They were also a powerful metaphor for spiritual change.

Rabbinical writing affirms the presence of a righteous soul within fish and the Kabbalah identified them as symbols for concealed reality.  The great fish Leviathan was hostile and destructive, but the abundance of seafood in the Mediterranean was life giving, a traditional part of a Jewish diet and still served for Passover or Rosh Hashanah when honored guests are served a fish heads to commemorates the "head of the year.”  And Bloom’s love of fish was personal.  He was a regular customer of the original Legal Sea Foods and worked to create a series of fish paintings in his studio over the restaurant before it was destroyed by fire.  

Fish swam through Bloom’s subconscious, and informed his understanding of psychoanalysis.  Strange coincidental stories of fish as dream symbols were central to Jung’s book The Mind of God.  As a painter, Bloom has created a masterwork; a mix of cultural and literary references.  “Seascape II” pulls content from the waters of our unconscious, and speaks to our ability to become transformed by art.

For more about Hyman Bloom and “Seascape II”, please see recent reviews for The Expressive Voice

The Expressive Voice: Selections from the Permanent Collection
By Meredith Cutler, ArtScope Magazine, January 2012

Boston Expressionists Get Their Due
By Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, December 21, 2011

New Exhibit Shows Off Danforth’s Boston Expressionist Collection
by Chris Bergeron, MetroWest Daily News, December 11, 2011

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December 2011


Karl Zerbe
Karl Zerbe, American, 1903-1972
Under the Chandelier, 1948
Collection, Danforth Museum of Art
Gift of Herbert P. and Marylou Gray, 2011.45

Under the Chandelier is a complex work.  Created in 1948 by German Expressionist émigré Karl Zerbe, the most recent addition to the Museum’s permanent collection is not only a sensitive portrait of the artist Hyman Bloom, but also a visionary depiction of what happened to American painting in the mid- 20th century—a time when representational painting was increasingly marginalized by the rise of abstraction. 

Ironically, Hyman Bloom inspired and contributed to the development of the abstract movement.  Known as one of the “bad boys from Boston,” he took the 1940’s art world by storm when both he and his friend Jack Levine were featured on the covers of art magazines and shown at the Museum of Modern Art.  In fact Bloom’s 1940 painting The Synagogue, depicting a cantor singing beneath a glittering chandelier and one of many works exploring the spiritual qualities of light, was purchased by MOMA.  Willem De Kooning later recalled seeing the work, remarking that he and his friend Jackson Pollock considered Bloom “the first Abstract Expressionist in America.”

Yet despite his expressive approach to pushing paint across the canvas, Bloom remained committed to the human figure, determined to “tell the truth” in visual terms.  Under the Chandelier makes clear that this determination to paint realistically might also threaten his artistic existence.  Instead of shedding light, Zerbe's chandelier is heavy and oppressive and the far corners of the studio remain dark.  As art historian Judith Bookbinder observes in her book Boston Modern, the artist is diminished, pressed down into the lower corner of the painting.  Once a source of inspiration, the chandelier has been transformed into “a glowing, crystal sword of Damocles.” 

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November 2011


Rhoda Rosenberg, Dear Rhoda, Dear Sylvia, 2008
woodcut transfer
plate 31½ x 24 inches
paper 37½ x 29½ inches
Collection, Danforth Museum of Art

Marking a new educational partnership with the School for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Danforth Museum is pleased to again feature an exhibition by Museum School Alumni and teacher Rhoda Rosenberg. Focusing on family, the exhibition considers work from 1993 until the present and expands our understanding of Boston artists involved with an institution that has become central to an understanding of Boston Expressionism.

Much has been made of painters who studied at the Museum School prior to Rosenberg, male artists who shared an interest in figuration and trompe l'oeil. As a woman and a printmaker, Rosenberg does not initially fit into that line of succession-particularly given her embrace abstraction, feminism and conceptual practice. Yet, like the painterly expressionists who share her alma mater, Rosenberg works from memory, not observation. Essential meaning grows out of emotion.

Central to the exhibit is a coiled artist book Rosenberg created in the year following her mother's death-a work that, like emotion, can be tightly wound or loosed for public view. Using stretched, tangled, knotted and collapsing lines, Rosenberg expresses grief in visual terms. Other prints depict her grandmother's handbag that seems almost too heavy to lift. Repeated images of her brother Nate's glasses are a lens through which she views the world.

And the world she views has changed rapidly since her early days as a Museum School student, and Rosenberg is very much part of family of women who've found their voice in art college and beyond. Supported by waves of feminism that ebb and flow throughout the 20th century, women artists find that their artistic lineage may be complex, but it's tightly knit, an absolute link to our wider understanding of past and present.


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October 2011


Elsa Dorfman
Portrait of Photographer Elsa Dorfman, 2009.
Courtesy of the Boston Globe

Elsa Dorfman: Still Clicking Away

Elsa Dorfman’s current exhibit at the Danforth not only captures a split second in the lives of her subjects, but also an important moment in the history of photography.  Originally created to document flat works of art, Polaroid’s large format cameras quickly caught the attention of photographers interested in creating portraits of living people. 

Dorfman is one of the best known to work with Polaroid’s large format, and her camera is only one of six that exists world wide.   Images taken for “No Hair Day" on view at the Danforth—the visual story a single afternoon in the lives of three women undergoing treatment for breast cancer—display a range of human emotions and behaviors compressed into a single day.  However, the series also reveals the ephemeral and timeless qualities of photography, its ability to capture a fleeting moment that tells a larger story.

Due to the growing popularity of the digital camera, traditional film is used increasingly less and large format images will become rare. Committed to using what little remains of available stock, Dorfman works in her studios in both Manhattan and Cambridge, MA to create her images of “affection and survival,” happy to be “still clicking away after all these years.”   

Related Media
Cancer, cameras and courage: the battles of three local women
by Chris Bergeron, Wicked Local Arts, October 6, 2011

20 x 24: Polaroid Portraits of Filmmakers
by Rollo Romig, The New Yorker: Photo Booth, July 15, 2011

Elsa Dorfman: Photographer
by Offlinna, youtube.com, October 30,2011


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September 2011


Christine Osinski
Christine Osinski, My Childhood Camera, 2010, digital photograph on view as part of 2011 New England Photography Biennial, Curated by George Slade.

Once again, we are pleased to host the New England Photography Biennial, showcasing some of the best contemporary work produced by artists living and working in our region.  Selecting 74 photographs from 1055 images submitted by 211 photographers, former PRC curator George Slade has curated one of our strongest photography shows to date.

Mindful that we are living at a time in which artists are able to construct many levels of reality through the magic of Photoshop, Slade chose four single works for their consideration of “the phenomena of reflections, layers, and complex visions,” rewarded by his encounter with images that boasted “no manipulation, taken as seen,” in a world “still densely wondrous enough to mystify and entrance without digital enhancement.”
 
However, the bulk of the exhibition displays work in complimentary pairs, which allowed Slade to make comparisons between “form, content and spirit.”  Guided by a pursuit of quality and his desire to provide a snapshot of accomplished work being done at this moment in time, Slade remarks that he “sought evidence of seeing deeper, of photography used to extend knowledge, awareness, and curiosity.  In short, he was drawn to images that were compelling—able to “reflect ideas, take chances, and use photography’s unique syntax to investigate and learn from the material world.”

Click here for more information on the 2011 New England Photography exhibition, and to view on-line catalog of the show.

Free Fall Family Day
Sunday, September 11, 1pm - 4pm
Sponsored by Framingham Co-operative Bank

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July 2011


Scott Magoon, Lochness
Scott Magoon, Lochness, 2007, pen, ink, digital
1st Place Winner - Picture This! Exhibition

New This Year - Picture This! 

A picture book's mission is great because it is among the very first experiences of the wider world a child will encounter. As such, we need to make sure the books we create and expose them to are of the best content, both from an editorial and from a visual standpoint. Any of the art works at the Danforth PictureThis! exhibit certainly meet that level of quality.
-
Scott Magoon, 1st place winner,
Picture This!

Featuring some of the best examples of contemporary picture book illustration created by artists living and working in New England, Picture This! is now on view in the Museum’s Children’s Gallery on the second floor of the Danforth Building—an exciting new addition to the Museum’s annual roster of juried shows. Created as part of the Danforth’s continuing mission to link the Museum and the Museum School with programs and exhibits that engage, inspire and transform the lives of children and adults, Picture This! reaches out to our next generation of museum visitors. “Picture books are a child’s first art gallery,” says Museum Director Katherine French, “helping young children develop a verbal and visual language as a foundation for future learning.”

Scott Magoon, first place winner of this exciting inaugural exhibition agrees. “Picture books are a gateway to learning and life—just as books are for adults,” Magoon works very hard to make sure his illustrations consider the child first and then the parent. For example, his winning illustration, Loch Ness from the book Luck of the Loch Ness Monster: A Tale of Picky Eating, appeals to his quirky sensibility. “Many picture books are similar in feel,” he observes. “I like ones…that are a bit odd, or slightly snarky, or otherwise different.”  While Magoon’s choices may be rooted in the strange or odd, his illustrations impart an inspiring and optimistic message.

Scott Magoon
Scott Magoon

Magoon has won acclaim for past children’s books that include Hugo and Miles In I’ve Painted Everything (2007), Mystery Ride (2008), and Mostly Monsterly (2010). He also works as an Art Director for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s children’s division. By working with other artists, designers, and authors, Magoon has gained a unique perspective that informs his own artistic choices. His experience with layout, design, and typography helps him see “both sides of the coin” and help him plan out a book better than if he were only an illustrator.

Currently a resident of Reading, MA, where he lives with his wife and two sons, Magoon has consistently been selected for the Society of Illustrators The Original Art, an exhibition that showcases original work from the year's best children's books nationwide. While the scope of Picture This! is regional and not national, Magoon was impressed by the Danforth’s professional, friendly and encouraging approach. Magoon’s first prize win—and his first visit to the Danforth—will not be his last. “I was so impressed with the breadth of talent on display in Off the Wall and Picture This! and proud to have my work featured with my fellow talented artists. I truly enjoyed talking shop with other illustrators [at the opening]. There’s an energy…at the show that cannot be duplicated, from which charged and inspiring conversations can grow.”

Picture This! curated by Susan Sherman of Charlesbridge Publishing is on view in the Danforth Museum of Art’s Children’s Gallery through Sunday, August 7. For more information about the show click here and view on the on-line catalog.

For more info on Scott Magoon, visit www.scottmagoon.com.

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June 2011


Rania Matar, Shannon, 21, Boston
Rania Matar, Shannon, 21, Boston, 2011
archival pigment print on Baryta paper
1st Place Winner - Off the Wall Exhibition

A Danforth Success Story:
Rania Matar

Rania Matar's insightful photographs reveal moments of order and domesticity amidst upheaval to capture the stability found within instability…

Jill Medvedow, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

A sense of duality informs Matar's work…its balance between the realistic and poetic. She is the documentarian as lyricist, someone who, recording the incongruous, discovers the transcendent.
Mark Feeney, Boston Globe, December 2009

First Prize Winner in this year’s Off the Wall Juried Exhibition has received many awards for her photographs, but credits participation in the Danforth 2007 New England Photography Biennial as key to helping her complete the transition from art student to working artist. By entering work for review, Rania Matar came to the attention of MFA curator Karen Haas and Gallery Owner Arlette Kayafas, co-jurors who awarded Matar the Museum’s Purchase Prize for Barbie Girl--not only featuring the work prominently in the show, but also welcoming it into the Danforth’s permanent collection. Kayafas offered to represent Matar, and curators at the ICA were notified. In 2008 Matar was named an ICA Foster Prize Finalist and once again enjoyed exhibiting in a Boston area museum. Now an established and successful artist—in 2011 she received awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, PDN Magazine and the Griffin Museum of Photography—Matar continues to participate in the Danforth Annual Juried exhibitions as one of the many talented member artists in our Museum community.     

Rania Matar, Barbie Girl
Rania Matar, Barbie Girl, Haret Hreik, Beirut, 2006, archival ink-jet prin
from the 2007 New England Photography Biennialt

A practicing architect before becoming a photographer, Lebanese born Rania Matar focuses her lens on women's issues. Whether examining the plight of women and children Palestinian refugee camps or studying suburban teenagers within the confines of their private space, Matar is interested in transitional times of life, giving voice to people who might otherwise be overlooked, misunderstood or forgotten.

Currently a resident of Newton, Matar now works full-time as a photographer and teaches documentary photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In the summers, she also teaches photography to teenage girls in Lebanon's refugee camps with the assistance of non-governmental organizations. Her new body of work, A Girl and her Room, photographing teenage girls from different backgrounds has been featured in numerous publications and exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. For more information on the artist and her work, visit RaniaMatar.com.

The Danforth Museum of Art’s 2011 Juried Exhibitions, Off the Wall, Community of Artists and Picture This!, are currently on view until Sunday, August 7. In addition to Matar, other prize winners for Off the Wall include: Prilla Smith Bracket, 2nd prize; Linda Leslie Brown, 3rd prize; CB Forsythe, honorable mention; Katherine Gulla, honorable mention; Marilyn Ranker, honorable mention; Susan Schmidt, honorable mention; and Leslie Starobin, honorable mention. Prize winners for Picture This! include: Scott Magoon, 1st prize; Giles Laroche, 2nd prize; Leo Landry, 3rd prize; Chris Beatrice, honorable mention; Jon Lechner, honorable mention; and Jennifer Lewis, honorable mention. Matar’s photograph, Shannon, 21, Boston, and other displayed artwork is for sale, helping to support the Museum’s exhibitions and programming, as well as the exhibiting artists. View all work for sale in our new online catalogs.

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May 2011


Lisa Russell
Image: Lisa Gabrielle Russell, Emergence #401, 2011
Courtesy of the Artist
Exhibiting in Off the Wall Exhibition

In Our Own Back Yard
Off the Wall, Picture This & Community of Artists

This month the Danforth Museum of Art marks the end of its 35th Anniversary Year as a community museum, continuing to serve more than 50,000 visitors each year. These visitors include not only families and casual art lovers, but also a growing number of artists, collectors and curators.  In fact, more than one third of current members identify themselves as artists. How appropriate that we mark Museum Membership Month by preparing for Off the Wall, Picture This! and Community of Artists, juried exhibitions that showcase some of the very best contemporary work being produced today—within New England and beyond.

This year more than 1,400 works were submitted by 495 artists for our Annual Juried Exhibitions, and the uniformly high quality of work made these shows more competitive than ever before. Susan Stoops, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Worcester Museum of Art selected 103 works by 99 artists for Off the Wall, an exhibition meant to reflect her own curatorial vision. An additional 25 works by 20 illustration artists were chosen by Susan Sherman for Picture This!, our inaugural exhibition of original art created for children’s picture books.  Finally, Museum Director Katherine French selected 158 works by 148 artists for Community of Artists, an exhibition designed to present a broad range of all work submitted—a unique snapshot of an arts community engaged by the Danforth. 

 The Annual Juried Exhibitions not only describe the engagement of member artists at the Danforth, but also on the part of curators from other institutions. A short list of past jurors for Off the Wall includes Leslie Brown formerly of the Photographic Resource Center; Nick Capasso from the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; Carole Anne Meehan and Helen Molesworth from the ICA,Boston; Jen Mergel from the MFA, Boston; John Stomberg from the Williams College Museum of Art; and Lisa Tung from MassArt.  Each year, curators, private collectors and gallery owners discover new artists. Work from juried exhibitions at the Danforth has been selected for other museum shows, purchased by private collectors, or helped artists find gallery representation. And some artists, including current exhibitors Elizabeth Keithline and Adria Arch, have realized solo exhibitions in the Museum.

Most work in the Juried Exhibitions is for sale, and can be viewed in our on-line catalog, available next week. New this year, the on-line catalog will provide an opportunity to view the outstanding work by member artists in advance—once again proof that we need look no further than our own back yard to discover some of the best contemporary art being produced today. While many museums pursue a global focus, the Danforth is committed to artists living and working in the immediate community. Support this talented group by making a purchase of original art from one or all of our outstanding shows, or become a Sponsor for Off the Wall.

Sponsors are part of a very special group invited to our Off the Wall Patron’s Preview on Saturday, June 11th from 7-9 pm, an elegantly catered affair in support of all exhibitions at the Danforth. Off the Wall Sponsors will have the first opportunity to purchase work at a 20% discount, as well as many other benefits. Please call the Development Office at 508-620-0050 ext. 16 for more information about how to become an Off the Wall Sponsor. We appreciate your support of our award winning exhibition programming and hope to see you in the Museum soon.

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April 2011


Adam Gustavson, The Yankee at the Seder
Image: Adam Gustavson, Detail from The Yankee at the Seder
watercolor and gouache on paper
Courtesy of the Artist

A Child's First Art Gallery

Picture books are a child’s first art gallery, and the Danforth places high value on this vital component of early childhood education.  This year we are pleased to introduce Picture This! -- a new juried show inviting submissions from children’s book illustrators.  Picture This! joins Off the Wall and Community of Artists as one of three annual juried exhibitions  showcasing new and exciting art by contemporary member artists, and will be on display in our Children’s Gallery over the summer.

The first juror for Picture This! will be Susan Sherman, currently Art Director at Charlesbridge Publishing, who has also served as Art Director of Children's Trade Books at Houghton Mifflin and Creative Director at Little, Brown and Company.  Sherman also runs her own graphic design business, Ars Agassiz and is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where she has worked with David McPhail, David Macaulay, Allen Say, Lois Lowry, and Chris Van Allsburg, notably on The Polar Express.  Sherman’s prestige as a juror has already attracted entries from both established and emerging book illustrators and we look forward to the June 11 opening of our Annual Juried Exhibitions.

More immediately, those interested in children’s book illustration will be able to view a unique exhibition by children’s book illustrator Adam Gustavson.  Thanks to a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Danforth is pleased to present Gustavson’s original watercolors created for the book The Yankee at the Seder, written by Elka Weber. Displayed in collaboration with the 2011  Framingham Reads Together Program, a town-wide literacy initiative based on the Civil War during our nation’s 150th Anniversary of this historic event. Funding from the NEA, as well as the Framingham Cultural Council and Foundation for Metrowest, also supports Drop Into Art and other related educational programs that promote visual and verbal literacy.

Set in a Virginia town at the very end of the Civil War, The Yankee at the Seder tells the story of a young boy named Jacob whose family is not quite ready to concede defeat to the North.  However, they are quick to extend an invitation to Myer Levy, a Yankee soldier, to join them for Passover.  Gathered around the Seder table, the group discusses contradictory ideas of what it means to be free. This touching, heart-felt story shows how cultural and religious connections can bridge a deep divide, allowing for individuals with different ideas to find a common ground.

Artist Adam Gustavson has exhibited widely, and the Museum is truly pleased to welcome him as a special guest during our school vacation workshops on Thursday, April 21.  Picture books are an important part of Museum’s art education program, directing children to consider shape, line and color at a very young age.  We invite you to come to view this beautifully realized exhibition of original watercolors, now on view in our Children’s Gallery on the second floor near the Museum School through June 6.
 
Adam Gustavson at the Danforth Museum of Art
(learn more)
Studio Visit to School Vacation Workshop Attendees, April 21, 2011
Book Signing Sunday, April 21, 2011, 2 pm.  All Welcome.

Artists - Submit work to Picture This! (learn more)

   

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March 2011


Arches Student Print Show
Image: Installation view Arches Student Print Show.Students view show during opening reception in the Museum School. Courtesy of Kristina Wilson and Pat Walker.

In Your Face at the Danforth
Arches Student Print Show
February 27 - April 10, 2011

Kelliann Jarasiitis, an older student finishing her degree at Massasoit Community College, could not contain her excitement as she loaded her husband and three children into their car to attend the opening reception on February 27th.  Her monotype "Pumpkin Bowl,” a portrait of her eight year old son in his football uniform, was not only been accepted into the show, but also won an award from the Arches Paper Company. Like many, she had not anticipated the sheer number of people who would attend. However, she and her family made their way through the crowds to the second floor galleries where her son “was beside himself and very proud to see his portrait hanging in an art museum.”

Sponsored by the Arches Paper Company as a companion to the 2011 North American Biennial, the 7th Annual Arches Student Print Show not only acquaints the public with emerging printmakers, but also gives students 20 participating colleges throughout New England an opportunity to exhibit with some of our country’s most renowned artists—and share this experience with family and friends. And judging from the flurry of activity on Facebook, these young artists are just as accomplished as writers and filmmakers, as they are as printmakers. See one such video on a blog by Andrea Garcia from Franklin Pierce University in Concord, NH. The video features Andrea’s interviews with from Montserrat College of Art’s Suzy Evans and Boston University’s Lindsay Weitzman, as well as some great music. 

To post your own observations, pictures or videos throughout the exhibition, please visit our Facebook page.    

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February 2011


Jim Dine with Pat Walker and Katherine French
Image (Top to Bottom): Jim Dine with Museum Director Katherine French and Director of Education Pat Walker

A Genuine Collaboration:
The Boston Printmakers Biennial at the Danforth

February 27 – May 1, 2011

The Danforth Museum of Art will host the 2011 North American Print Biennial, one of the most prestigious events of contemporary printmaking in the United States, juried by Jim Dine. The exhibition runs from February 27 to May 1 and begins with A Dialogue by Jim Dine and MFA Curator Clifford Ackley on contemporary printmaking. The lecture will take place at Framingham State University’s Dwight Hall on Sunday, February 27 at 1:30pm. Immediately following the lecture, the events continue with an Opening Reception at the Danforth Museum of Art from 3 to 5pm to be attended by Jim Dine and exhibiting artists. Both events are free and open to the public.

Jim Dine an American pop artist is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. In 1962 Dine's work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Dowd, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Edward Ruscha, and Wayne Thiebaud, in the historically important and ground-breaking New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps at the Norton Simon Museum. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first "Pop Art" exhibitions in America. These painters started a movement, in a time of social unrest, which shocked America and the Art world and changed Modern Art forever. - Wikipedia

On the first floor of the Danforth, guests will have the opportunity to view the 149 prints selected by Jim Dine. The Biennial features prints created in traditional print processes including lithography, woodcut, linocut, etching, mezzotint and screenprinting, as well as works produced in new or experimental media such as digital, collage, artist books, and 3-dimensional constructions. The North American Print Biennial supports both artists and museums by awarding purchase prizes and material awards. See list of 2011 Prize Winners.

As a companion to the 2011 North American Print Biennial, the Danforth Museum School second floor galleries will exhibit The Arches Student Print Show sponsored by the Arches Paper Company. Starting In 1999, this companion exhibition expands the scope of Biennial activities to include printmaking from more than 20 New England colleges and universities. Giving students the opportunity to exhibit with some of our country’s most renowned artists and offers the public the chance to become acquainted with talented up-and-coming printmakers.

Learn more about the Boston Printmakers at www.bostonprintmakers.org

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January 2011


Katherine French
Katherine French, Director

Museum Nominated
2010 New England Art Awards

Find Out Why!
Boston Expressionism Lecture
Sunday, January 23 at 3 pm

After more than 35 years as a community museum, the Danforth Museum of Art has become known as a premier venue to view work by both established and emerging artists working in New England.  Recognized at the 2009 New England Art Awards for shows featuring work by Boston Expressionist artists, we are pleased to again be nominated in several categories for 2010. 

Organized by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research to honor the best exhibitions, artists, and writing about art produced here in New England, these awards take the unusual step of asking the community to participate.  Winners are chosen and announced in two categories—first by active art writers and journalists, and secondly by the general public.  For more information, please see gregcookland.com or go right to the voting ballot gregcookland.com/neaa/.

Find out why the arts community considers a small community museum a showcase for some of the best art produced in New England by attending a lecture on Boston Expressionism this Sunday, January 23 at 3 pm.  Speaking on an expressive tradition that inspires a profound belief in the human spirit, Museum Director Katherine French will make the connection between Boston art from the 1940’s and exciting new work by contemporary artists working today.  The lecture is open to the public and free with the cost of general admission.

We would then encourage you to not only cast your vote in the 2010 New England Art Awards, but also participate by attending the Awards next month.  Winners will be announced at the 2010 New England Art Awards Ball at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011, at the Burren, 247 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts. The event is free and open to all. Creative attire is encouraged.

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December 2010


Neeta Madahar, Sustenance 92
Image: Neeta Madahar, Sustenance 92, 2003 Collection, Danforth Museum of Art. Image courtesy of the artist and
Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston

Sustain Your Love of Art

Many have asked about the beautiful image used on this year’s Annual Appeal card, and we are pleased to share the story of one artist’s generosity—and of her connection to our community.  Following what has become an annual tradition, photographer Neeta Madahar has gifted Sustenance 92 to our permanent collection, a large Iris print created in 2003 when she was a student at the Museum School in Boston.  Begun as her graduate thesis project, these fifteen images of birds feeding at a birdfeeder gained immediate interest both locally and abroad.  Exhibited in France, England and Germany, the series was first displayed in its entirety at the Danforth Museum in 2006.  Madahar’s work is now internationally acclaimed, and we are extraordinarily pleased to welcome Sustenance 92 back to a home in near its place of origin.

As a British citizen of Indian descent who has lived and worked in the United States, Madahar constantly refers to themes of migration and transition throughout her work.  In the Sustenance project, she examined the complexities of the domestic environment, recording the feeding activity of birds as observed over all the seasons from her balcony in a Framingham apartment complex.  Possessing a "dioramic" quality due to use of a large format camera and flash, these photographs explore issues of home, migration and belonging, as well as themes of habit, change and consistency.  Madahar says "it is difficult to resist projecting human behavior and characteristics on these creatures. …The Sustenance photographs attempt to articulate that revelatory experiences, both subtle and dramatic, can occur through obsessive concentration on a task."

Please consider this beautiful image when making your annual gift to the Museum.  Art has the power to engage, inspire and transform the lives of both children and adults in our community.  Your tax-deductible contributions not only help meet our immediate need for a cash match for recent NEA grants, but will also nourish and sustain one of New England’s fastest growing cultural organizations.  We thank you for your support.

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November 2010


Jack Levine, Feast of Pure Reason
Jack Levine, Feast of Pure Reason, 1971
etching and aquatint on paper
Collection, Danforth Museum of Art

A Feast of Pure Reason
Expressionism in Boston 
Honoring Jack Levine (1915-2010)

It is with deep regret that we note the recent passing of Jack Levine, a brilliantly acerbic painter whose socially aware paintings were featured in the Museum’s 2005 exhibition Political Discourse. As part of its continued commitment to Boston Expressionism—and to honor of the memory of Mr. Levine—the Museum opens a new exhibition tracing the historical roots of Boston Expressionism from the 1930’s to its continued presence in the Boston art world today, the exhibit displays visionary prints and paintings that offer up a distinctive blend of dark humor, religious mysticism or social commentary.

The exhibit takes its title from Jack Levine’s painting shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC in 1937.  Feast of Pure Reason portrays a Boston politician, police officer and businessman conspiring together.  Speaking about this triple portrait of Boston cronies huddled around a table, Levine remarked "It is my privilege as an artist to put these gentlemen on trial, to give them every ingratiating characteristic they might normally have, and then present them, smiles, benevolence and all, leaving it up to the spectator to judge the merits of the case.” This suggestion of corruption raised concern on the part of MOMA’s Trustees who debated fiercely before giving permission to display the work. The Danforth Museum of Art is proud to display a print Levine subsequently made of this painting, one of two Levine prints now on display in the Swartz Gallery.
Like his childhood friend Hyman Bloom, Levine was not college educated, but widely read.  Levine’s title The Feast of Pure Reason visually quotes the "Nighttown" sequence in James Joyce's book Ulysses; an adage by Alexander Pope; and the writings of 18th century French intellectuals.  Like many of his contemporaries who continued to paint representationally during the rise of Abstract Expressionism, Levine sought to make rational pictorial sense in what seemed to be an increasingly irrational world.  Seen together, these Boston Expressionist works selected from the Danforth Museum of Art’s permanent collection represent what these artists might have considered a “feast of pure reason.”

On Sunday, January 23 at 3 pm, Museum Director Katherine French will present a special benefit lecture.  Proceeds will be dedicated towards support of the Museum’s continuing exploration of Boston Expressionism—and eventual acquisition of a Levine painting for its permanent collection. Details to come.

Related Media
Jack Levine obituary
by Michael McNay, Guardian, November 16, 2010

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October 2010


Robert Knight
Robert Knight, Untitled (6 hours, December 13, 2009)
archival inkjet print 30" x 39"
Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston, MA

Recent visitors to the Museum have been fascinated with Sleepless, an exhibition of photographs, audio recordings and video by the artist Robert Knight. The artist created this work by setting up his view camera overnight in the rooms of restless sleepers.  His color saturated images are a combination of sharp focus (objects in the room which do not move) accompanied by the ghost like blurring of the subject as the restlessness of sleep is documented.  Unusual colors result from the interaction of the light – from outside penetrating the window treatments or from sources within the room, a night light or even a watch. The audio, a cacophony of sirens, horns, dogs barking, people talking, cars speeding, is anything but soothing or relaxing.

 Knight says about his work; “My photographs and videos reveal a state of restlessness through ethereal and translucent bodies which are captured during long-exposure night time shots. The resultant images are nighttime narratives - stories of our nights’ sleep which suggest a contemporary sleep crisis in our society.”

The photographs in the exhibition are printed on watercolor paper giving them a luminescent and painterly quality, which emphasizes a sense of sleeplessness. Accompanying large format photographs is a series of smaller photos with attached audio components, as well as two videos. One of the videos, located in the New Media Gallery, is a video of the artist himself projected onto a giant pillow. The audio and video components of this work create an interesting dialogue between the viewer and the artwork itself.

Visit this interesting and interactive exhibition of work on view in the Museum’s main galleries through Sunday, November 7, 2010. Robert Knight will speak on his work this Sunday, October 24 at 3 pm.  Admission to the talk is free to members, or with the price of admission.  All are welcome to attend.

More information about the artist visit www.robertknight.com.

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September 2010


Barbara Grad, Boundary Shift
Barbara Grad, Boundary Shift, 2008
oil on canvas, 60 x 54 inches
Courtesy of the Artist

Over the past five years, the Danforth Museum of Art has become known as a venue to see work created by artists living and working in New England.  Solo exhibitions not only allow visitors to explore the work by one artist in depth, but also showcase the rich diversity of our local art scene.  Such is the case with our new exhibition Video Villa: New Paintings by Barbara Grad, which opens up the dynamic intersection of worlds seemingly at odds, using maps as a secret entrée into gaming worlds, as well as aerial topography in paintings that explore the boundaries between the built and the natural world.

In the words of artist Barbara Grad, works in Video Villa represents “a synthesis all my interests, a balance of representation and abstraction.”  Born and educated in Chicago, Grad wanted to create “a man-made place with landscape roots, respecting the beauty of nature,” while offering up “a metaphor for the destruction and reconstruction of environment and culture.”  A professor of painting at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design since 1981, Grad is not only one of the areas most respected artists, but also one of the most influential.  Her work appears in both public and private collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago Museum, Fidelity Investments and Wellington Management. 

Grad’s work has long held the attention of the prestigious curator Barbara O’Brien, well known to the New England community in her capacity as editor in chief at Art New England magazine, as well as former gallery director at both the Montserrat College of Art and the Trustman Gallery at Simmons College.  A native of northeast Kansas, Barbara O’Brien was recently appointed curator for the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, where Video Villa will travel this winter.

Please take the opportunity to visit this exciting exhibition of work on view in the Museum’s main galleries through Sunday, November 7, 2010.  On Sunday, October 17 at 2 pm Curator Barbara O’Brien will give a curatorial presentation, speaking on her experience of collaborating with a living artist.  Artist Barbara Grad will speak on her own work on Sunday, November 7 at 3 pm. Talks are free for Museum members, or with paid admission.  All are welcome to attend

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Summer 2010


Susan L. Roth, Nothing But Miracles
Susan L. Roth, From the Book: Nothing But Miracles, 2003
Published by National Geographic Children's Books

Exhibits and classes have ended briefly, but activity within the Danforth Building has increased as we prepare for our upcoming Fall Family Day on Sunday, September 12. Thanks to generous sponsorship from Framingham Co-operative Bank, Museum admission will be free.  Renowned children’s book illustrator Susan L. Roth will be available for a book signing related to her new exhibit of original artwork for Nothing But Miracles, free family art activities will be offered during the Museum School Open House from 1-4 pm, and exhibiting artists will attend the Opening Reception for all fall exhibits from 5-7 pm.

There is fresh look to the Museum.
Visitors will have the opportunity to see four new exhibits, making the Danforth Museum of Art one of the most exciting venues to see contemporary work by New England artists. Guest curator Barbara O’Brien, formerly Arts Editor for Art New England, has collaborated with artist Barbara Grad to present Video Villa: New Paintings. Inspired by the dynamic intersection of worlds seemingly at odds, Mass Art painting Professor Barbara Grad uses maps as a secret entrée into gaming worlds, as well as aerial topography to create paintings that explore the boundaries between the built and the natural world. Grad’s former student Susan Scott pulls apart the very structure of traditional painting in a presentation of new mixed media works, and Off the Wall’s 1st Prize Winner Cynthia Maurice offers up a unique contemplation of still life in her exhibit Fresh Cut. Finally, Robert Knight presents beautifully realized photographs and a video installation in Sleepless.

In addition to exhibitions of contemporary work, we are also pleased to present a number of new acquisitions to our permanent collection that explore of painterly expressionism in the exhibition Boston Expressionism: Other Voices. The Museum is extraordinarily pleased to welcome donations of work by Jules Aarons, David Aronson, Gerry Bergstein, Hyman Bloom, Aaron Fink, Nathan Goldstein, Jane Smaldone and Henry Schwartz. Seen together for the first time, these new acquisitions allow visitors to not only consider Boston Expressionism in an historical sense, but also understand its continuing appeal for contemporary artists.

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June 2010


Justin Augspurg, Relax and Enjoy the Sunset, 2010
Justin Augspurg, Relax and Enjoy the Sunset, 2010
60" x 72" oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist

The 2010 Annual Juried Members’ Exhibitions, Off the Wall and A Community of Artists, are currently on view until Sunday, August 8. These two separate exhibitions are part of the Museum’s annual celebration of art and the creation of art, and showcase work by regional artists who are also members of the Museum. Displayed artwork is for sale, helping to support exhibitions and educational programming, as well as the exhibiting artists.

About the Off the Wall Exhibition
Juried by Jen Mergel, Beal Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Art, Boston and Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Off the Wall communicates these renowned curators’ contemporary vision of art that is willing to break with traditional conventions and push a given medium to an open end.

The curators chose 113 works from 800 pieces of art submitted by 451 artists for this tightly curated exhibition, which features work by artists in all mediums.  The following prizes and honorable mentions were also awarded:

1st Prize was awarded to Somerville resident Cynthia Maurice for Almost, a pastel and charcoal drawing. Part of Fresh Cut,  a series featuring drawings and paintings of both fruits and vegetables, the drawing focuses on the fleeting, transformative aspects of a bloom from bud to decay.

2nd Prize was awarded to Natick resident Steve Miller for his photograph That Touch of Mink which explores the use of the figure as fantasy through the spontaneous expression of photography.

3rd Prize
was awarded to Watertown resident Stella Johnson for her photograph The Laundry, Crete, Greece, which reflects her conflicting location of self between Greece and the U.S., and between memory and the present tense.

Honorable Mentions were awarded to Brookline resident Helga Butzer Felleisen for her Scapes I and II, both works ink on paper; Roslindale resident Jane Smaldone for her oil on linen Signs of Intelligent Life; Roxbury resident Kate True for her oil, ink, and charcoal on linen, The Sick Child; and Lancaster resident Cheryl Wareck for her digital photographs Lost and Found and Through the Woods, both from The Farm Series.

About A Community of Artists Exhibition
Selected by Museum staff, A Community of Artists’ reveals a sometimes affirming, sometimes provocative glimpse at the contemporary art scene.  This year’s exhibition includes 145 pieces, showcasing work by both emerging and established artists.  Several are well known to the Boston arts community, including such widely exhibited artists as Somerville residents Jon Imber and Carolyn Muskat; Framingham resident Nan Hass Feldman;  Concord resident Ilana Manolson; Cambridge resident Esther Pullman; Boston resident Nan Tull; and Wayland resident Yu-Wen Wu.

The exhibition also includes Danforth Museum School faculty and staff members Carol Blackwell, Wilber Blair, Emily Harvey, Susan Swinand and Zach Pelham; SMFA professor Erica Daborn; and Wellesley College and MassArt professor Joel A. Janowitz.

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May 2010


Off the Wall and Community of Artists

In Our Own Backyard

This month the Danforth Museum of Art celebrates its 35th anniversary year as a community museum continuing to serve families, artists and art lovers.  How appropriate that we mark May as Museum Members' month preparing for juried exhibitions that showcase the very best work currently produced by artists living and working in New England. 

Jen Mergel, Beal Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston have worked with museum staff to select work by for two outstanding exhibitions—Off the Wall and A Community of Artists.  The 113 works in Off the Wall and 144 works in A Community of Artists were selected from 800 entries submitted by 452 member artists.  In recent years these exhibits have been widely reviewed, which is unusual for large group shows.  The arts community has become aware of the significance of these two shows, and we are visited by an increasing number of curators and collectors—a sign that the Museum has become a venue for not only for historically important exhibits, but also for new and exciting contemporary art that finds its way into other museums and private collections. 

We invite you to become part of this conversation by joining us for a special Off the Wall Patrons' Preview on Saturday, June 12th from 7-10 pm.  This elegant event brings together artists, collectors, and the museum community for a fundraiser that supports our award-winning exhibitions—and provides a first opportunity to purchase works from both emerging and established artists.  While many other museums are choosing a national or even global focus, the Danforth Museum of Art remains committed to the region—proving that we need look no further than our own back yard to discover some of the very best contemporary work available anywhere. View the list of selected artists.

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April 2010


Giles Laroche, Partenon
Parthenon, Athens, Greece, 2009
From What's Inside? Fascinating Structures Around the World
paper relief, 20" x 30"
Courtesy of the Artist

Giles Laroche:  Bridge Across Cultures,
The World at My Fingertips

Picture books are a child’s first art gallery, and this month we are pleased to feature a unique exhibition by children’s book illustrator Giles LarocheBridge Across Cultures, The World at My Fingertips, supported through a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, celebrates sacred architecture from across the world with intricate collages depicting such diverse structures as Chartres Cathedral in France, the Great Mosque in Niger, or the Shri Meenakshi Amman Temple in India.  Laroche is a “paper engineer,” who goes beyond the collage of materials to create precise and detailed pictures by drawing, cutting, painting, and gluing multiple layers of paper.

Massachusetts artist Giles Laroche has exhibited in numerous other museums, including The Art Institute of Chicago and the DeCordova. He has also conducted workshops as artist-in-residence in schools across the Northeast, and the Museum is truly pleased to welcome him as a special guest during our School Vacation Workshops on April 22, and then for a book signing on Sunday, May 2.  Picture books are an important part of Museum’s art education program, directing children to consider shape, line and color at a very young age. Outstanding work by Laroche and other talented book artists encourage us to be not only verbally, but also visually literate. We invite you to come to view this provocative and beautifully realized exhibition, on view in our Children’s Gallery located on the second floor near the Museum School until May 16.
 
Giles Laroche at the Danforth Museum of Art
Studio Visit to School Vacation Workshop Attendees, Thursday, April 22, 2010
Book Signing Sunday, May 2, 2010, 1:30 pm

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March 2010


Masako Kamiya, Monologue, 2009
Monolouge, 2009
gouache on paper
20" x 16"
Collection Danforth Museum of Art

Driven to Abstraction
New Exhibitions Opening Saturday, March 20th

The Danforth Museum of Art is pleased to host exhibitions by three outstanding abstract artists: Robert Collins, Masako Kamiya and Anne Neely.  We will also be featuring a new exhibit of children’s book illustration by the award winning artist Giles Laroche.  Please join us this Saturday, March 20th from 6-8 pm for an opening reception for all new exhibitions.

Robert Collins: Vertical Abstractions
Robert Collins is an outstanding teacher and outstanding artist.  His latest works explore lines and shapes in complex abstractions that relate to natural forms found through observation.  These powerful works move the eye across the surface of his paintings, asking us to look closely.

Masako Kamiya:  Outspoken: 2002-2010 
The works of Masako Kamiya have a lot to say for themselves.  Columns of paint rise up, bristling with energy.  Dots of color vibrate, forcing the eye to dive beneath their uneven surface to consider painting in an entirely different way.  “Pointillism is the first thing people think of when they see my work,” observes Kamiya, but she challenges viewers to go beyond scientific ideas about color theory or optical mixing of paint.  “A point is very different from a dot,” she states.  “And my paintings start with dots.”

Giles Laroche: Bridge Across Cultures, The World at My Fingertips
Giles Laroche’s intricate cut paper collages celebrate constructions and architecture from around the world, including the Segovia Aqueduct in Spain, Chartres Cathedral in France, and the Great Mosque in Niger.  Laroche is a “paper engineer,” who goes beyond the collage of materials to create a precise and detailed picture. Each illustration involves many stages of drawing, cutting, painting, and gluing, resulting in up to eight complex layers. Spacers placed between each layer provide added depth and dimension. The multi-cultural subject matter and unusual technique appeals to a diverse audience of all ages. The illustrations on view were selected from the books Bridges Are to Cross, What’s Inside ?, and Sacred Places.

Anne Neely: Waterlines
Anne Neely constructs her paintings like poems, finding the rhythm and essential movement by organically building structure.  Through the process of creating a painting, her marks and colors become connected to one another as memory and imagination work together.  Her sensitive exploration of paint leads her through “uncharted territories and imagined landscapes.”  Many of her recent works were created in Maine and pay homage to the lost stillness of place found near water.

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February 2010


Beth Krommes, The Elf Maiden Gave Chase
The Elf Maiden Gave Chase
From The Hidden Folk by Lise Lunge Larsen
scratchboard, photocopy, and watercolor
Courtesy of the Artist

Beth Krommes: Winter Light

The Danforth Museum of Art is pleased to present Winter Light, an exhibition of work by Beth Krommes in our Children’s Gallery dedicated to the art of picture book illustration.  Krommes, recipient of the 2009 Caldecott Medal for The House in the Night will exhibit original art work for The House in the Night, as well as from a selection of her other books for children including Grandmother Winter, The Sun in Me: Poems About the Planet, and The Hidden Folk.

Ms. Krommes cites painting as her first love, but in 1982 became interested in wood engraving. Her first illustrations were created using wood engravings, but she soon switched to scratchboard, as it created the same look in less time. Scratchboard allows the artist to explore light and dark within compositions that contain vivid contrasts. The House in the Night is a quiet, peaceful bedtime story that also emphasizes the power of books to spark the imagination. Krommes' art is "richly detailed black-and-white scratchboard illustrations expand this timeless bedtime verse, offering reassurance to young children that there is always light in the darkness. Krommes’ elegant line, illuminated with touches of golden watercolor, evokes the warmth and comfort of home and family, as well as the joys of exploring the wider world.”

The artist currently resides in Peterborough, New Hampshire with her husband and two daughters. She says her mission is, “to create artwork that is joyful in spirit, universal in nature, and accessible and affordable to others.”   Learn more at www.bethkrommes.com.   

Beth Krommes will appear at a book signing in the Children's Gallery on Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 1:30 pm.  Copies of her books are available for sale in the Shop at the Danforth, and her signing is followed by Drop Into Art from 2-4 pm, featuring related hands-on art activities for children and their families.  Events are free to Museum members, or with paid admission.  All are welcome to attend.

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January 2010


Beth Krommes
Song of the Stars, 2003
From The Sun in Me: Poems About the Planet
scratchboard, photocopy, and watercolor
8 1/2" x 8 7/8"
Courtesy of the Artist

Beneath the Surface

Visitors continue to note connections between the main galleries and our Children’s Gallery.  Sometimes work by the same artist appears in both areas, as with last year’s exhibits by Faith Ringgold.  Sometimes subject matter is linked, as in the work of Hyman Bloom and children’s book illustrator Mordecai Gerstein.  Now, through the end of March, museum visitors will be able to see repeated examples of a painterly technique known as scraffitto throughout the Museum.
 
Derived from the Italian word sgraffire (to scratch), this technique is prehistoric, but used has been used extensively in Germany since the 13th century, was common in Italy during the 16th century, and is currently found in contemporary Native American and African art. By scratching through layers of clay slip, wet paint, or dried medium, the artist reveals what’s underneath. Any object that will scratch a line can be used for sgraffito, but Gerry Bergstein has found that the ‘wrong end’ of a brush is perfect.  In early self portraits now on view as part of the Museum’s current exhibition Effort At Speech, Bergstein scratches through dark layers to reveal a brightly colored world of artistic possibility.  It’s not only the artist who lurks beneath the piles of tangled bedclothes or twisted telephone wire.  It’s his creative self.  And lines inscribed into later paintings such as Après de le Deluge allow Bergstein to incorporate impulsive mark making into works that display his virtuosic handling of paint.

Upstairs in our Children’s Gallery, Caldecott medal winner Beth Krommes has employed scrafitto in her scratchboard illustrations for House in the Night and other books.  By removing the negative space around images, she’s revealed the drawing process in reverse.  Children visiting the exhibit are captivated by the different look in these pictures.  When they take part in special art activities in our First Sunday Drop Into Art Program, they are able to experiment with scratchboard (or scraffitto) for themselves—an important part of our hands-on approach to museum education that encourages visitor to scratch the surface and explore their own ability to create.

Recent Exhibition Reviews 

"Danforth exhibit examines 'The Paradox' at the core of Sudbury artist"
By Chris Bergeron, The MetroWest Daily News, January 17, 2010

"An Outsider, Deep Inside Himself
The reclusive Jewish painter Hyman Bloom reminds us that spirituality is stil a viable artistic path"
By Lance Esplund, cityArts, January 12, 2010

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December 2009


David Aronson, The Paradox, 1942
David Aronson, The Paradox, 1942
oil on panel
15 1/8" x 9 1/8"
Collection of Martin Weeden

Deceptive Truth

Visitors coming to see the new exhibitions at the Museum may note common themes between exhibits, as well as examples of a painterly technique known as trompe-l’oeil.  Literally meaning “trick of the eye,” this phrase describes methods used by Renaissance painters to go beyond mathematical perspective.  Later, the increasing popularity of scientific optics encouraged Dutch painters to deliberately deceive 17th century viewers.  Now contemporary artists use trompe-l’oeil to explore puzzling insecurities about how we see. 

In The Paradox, David Aronson displays virtuosic ability in his trompe-l’oeil rendering of mundane junk—an old telephone dial, cheap pieces of jewelry, keys hanging from a ring.  In Pierrot Lunaire,
Henry Schwartz sets collaged objects against the heightened realism of his portrait of Arnold Schoenberg, opening the composer’s voice box to reveal a tangle of wire circuitry beneath his almost photographic face.  And one must look closely at
Gerry Bergstein’s
works to be convinced that the masking tape has been painted onto a flat surface.  Images seemingly torn from Sunday comics or Art News are realistically depicted, used by Bergstein to both camouflage and reveal his comic self. 

Sometimes playful, but always serious, paintings by all three artists ask that we reflect on the nature of art and perception.  The world is not always as it first appears, but our willingness to question reality makes it more real.  And we are better for that. 

Recent Exhibition Reviews 

"Bergstein is the center of a constellation of 4 Danforth exhibits"
By Chris Bergeron, MetroWest Daily News, December 7, 2009

"Painting with a Boston accent
Danforth exhibition traces paths of three local Expressionists"
By Sebastian Smee, The Boston Globe, December 13, 2009

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November 2009


Henry Schwartz, Pierrot Lunaire, 1991
oil and mixed media on panel
18" x 14"
Collection Danforth Museum of Art

Celebrate Boston History

On Saturday, November 21, the Museum was pleased to debut four new exhibitions by regional artists known for creating complex works that depend upon human emotion.  Some, like David Aronson and Henry Schwartz, were contemporaries of Hyman Bloom, early Boston Expressionists whose works reveal a glimpse into the cultural scene around Boston prior to the rise of abstraction. Others, like Gerry Bergstein and Morgan Bulkeley, are contemporary artists who have continued to work in an expressive tradition that inspires a profound belief in the human spirit.  Considered together, these artists tell the story of Boston painting from the early 1940’s until the present time.    

For the last half of the 20th century, expressionism has existed outside the mainstream of contemporary art—its artists tend to eschew abstraction for representational imagery to present a complex narrative.  For Aronson these narratives described a willingness to confront religious tradition.  Schwartz used them to express ambivalent love for Germanic culture that produced great music out of destructive, even anti-Semitic, thinking.  Bergstein takes on the unavoidable influence of western art, and Bulkeley questions how great culture can destroy our environment. 

All these ambitious exhibits are thematically linked, some imagery re-occurs throughout, either explicitly or by association. These exhibitions also trace the lineage of painters working in the Boston area. Aronson was the teacher of Henry Schwartz; Schwartz was the teacher of Gerry Bergstein; Bergstein and Morgan Bulkeley once had studios near each other and have collaborated. Seen together, these shows resonate, and we invite you to visit the Museum many times over the next few months—not only to consider the history of Boston painting, but also its future.

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October 2009


Hyman Bloom, Seance II
Hyman Bloom, Seance II, c. 1955 - 57
oil on canvas, 56" x 48"
Promised Gift of Herbert and Mary Lou Gray

Boston Expressionism at the Museum

Like many in the art world, we were deeply saddened by the recent loss of Hyman Bloom, a truly great painter whose work helped define a movement of expressive painting. But we were also pleased to note continued interest in his achievements. On September 14th Hyman Bloom: A Spiritual Embrace opened in New York City’s Yeshiva University Museum, granting another opportunity to view the Danforth Museum of Art’s 2006 exhibition showcasing this significant Boston Expressionist artist.

Last year Drs. Tim and Francine Orrok donated Bloom’s Skeleton in Red Dress, and Herb and Mary Lou Gray, dedicated collectors of Boston Expressionism, recently donated Bloom’s Séance II. These significant works greatly add to the importance of the Museum’s permanent collection, increasing our ability to fully explore this fascinating body of work. In the coming months the Boston Globe will feature a profile on Bloom, and a documentary film is scheduled to be released.  In this atmosphere of heightened interest, the Museum has been pleased to be the recipient of recent gifts of major paintings by Hyman Bloom.

In November the Museum is pleased to debut new shows by other Boston artists known for creating complex works that depend upon human emotion.  Some, like David Aronson and Henry Schwartz, were contemporaries of Bloom, early Boston Expressionists whose works reveal a glimpse into the cultural scene in Boston following World War II.  Others, like Gerry Bergstein and Morgan Bulkeley, are younger painters who continue working in the painterly tradition of Boston Expressionism.  Working from memory rather than directly from nature, Aronson, Bergstein, Buckley and Schwartz are all inspired by a profound belief in the human spirit.  The Museum is proud to showcase their work and invites you to join us for the opening reception for all shows by Boston Expressionist artists on Saturday, November 21 from 6-8 pm.     

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September 2009


Neal
Neal Cohen, Carnival Nights, 2008
archival pigment print, 16" x 20"
Courtesy of the Artist

The Danforth Museum of Art is once again pleased to present the very best contemporary photography in the upcoming New England Photography Biennial 2009, which will be on view at the Museum from September 13 through November 8, 2009. The exhibit will officially open with a special public opening reception honoring the artists on Saturday evening, September 12 from 6-8 p.m.  A number of special lectures and talks will occur through the course of the exhibition. All programs are free to Museum members, or with regular admission.

Every two years, the Danforth Museum of Art celebrates photography as an art form through a highly selective exhibition of photographers who reside throughout New England.  Juried by Phillip Prodger, Curator of Photography, at the Peabody Essex Museum, and Barbara O'Brien, former editor of Art New England and former Director, Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons College, Boston, the 2009 New England Photography Biennial showcases exciting and innovative photography by both established and emerging artists.

When asked about her role as this year’s juror, Barbara O’Brien stated that it had been an “honor and a challenge to sift and sort through the over 1000 work documents submitted for review.” She describes the final show which she and Phillip Prodger curated; “The final selections present the artist’s current fascination, yet often reveal a keen awareness of their photos place within the history of photography.” Prodger adds, “I was deeply struck by the energy welling up from every corner of New England in photography - from every state, in cities and the rural areas, among serious amateurs and the professionally-trained, and from many different communities. The selections this year reflect a wide variety of approaches, from black-and-white documentary to conceptual digital.”

Prodger and O'Brien chose 73 works from 1,030 pieces submitted by 213 artists. A full list of selected artists can be found online here. Purchase prizes have been awarded to Meredith Miller, Untitled (Melissa after Greek Idyllic Family), 2003, color print, 40 x 30 inches and Mori Insinger, Chatham, Massachusetts, 2008, archival inkjet print, 20 x 24 inches.

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Summer 2009


Left: Black Beauty 4584, 1984, charcoal, oil-paint stick on paper, 30" x 22", Courtesy of Mr. & Mrs. Graham Gund Right: Grow 21484, 1984, graphite on clay coated paper, 24" x 18", Courtesy of the Artist

The Danforth Museum of Art is pleased to present Nan Tull: Sensuous Wisdom, 1984 – 2009, 25 Years of Painting and Drawing, a survey of more than 60 works by renowned Boston artist Nan Tull. The exhibit will be on view in the main galleries from September 12th through November 8th. On Wednesday, September 16th, Noon and Sunday, October 25, 3pm the artist will speak on her work. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 12, 6-8pm. All are welcome to attend.

About the Artist

Nan Tull received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her M.A. from Stanford University. She received a diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she received her 5th Year Certificate and the Clarissa Bartlett Traveling Scholarship.

She was awarded an Artists Foundation Fellowship (MA), and a NEA/NEFA fellowship, as well as residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts and the Vermont Studio Colony (VT). Her work has been widely exhibited, including a 20 year retrospective of her drawings, shown at the Boston Public Library. Her work held in private & corporate collections as well as in permanent Museum collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, the Boston Public Library, and the Danforth Museum of Art. Tull is a founding member of 249 A Street Cooperative in the Fort Point Channel area of Boston, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2008, where she still lives and creates.

Sensuous Wisdom, 2009
Essay by Katherine French, from Sensuous Wisdom exhibition catalog

Nan Tull remembers exactly when she first wanted to become an artist. Studying in Paris during her junior year at Wellesley, she observed many art students copying from original works in the Louvre. However, one day she was struck by the sight of a student not trying to replicate what she saw. Instead, the young woman was working to create an abstraction by enlarging the corner of a Titian painting-or what Tull thinks might have been a Titian. In her memory, the specific painting is not as important as the recognition of a process that would serve her well in later years, one that allowed for invention and made it possible for her to become a creative person...full essay coming soon.

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May 2009


Resa Blatman, Beauty and the Beasties, 2008
Resa Blatman, Beauty and the Beasties, 2008
oil, acrylic and glitter on cut-edge panel
Courtesy of the Artistt

Commitment to New England

The Danforth Museum of Art began life as a community museum, and continues as such after nearly thirty five years of serving its many constituent members—families, artists and museum goers of all ages throughout New England. This is particular true during May, appropriately designated Museum Membership month, and a time when we become increasing busy in preparation for juried exhibitions that showcase both established and emerging artists in exhibits that display the very best work currently produced in New England. 

Carroll and Sons Director Joseph Carroll and Mass College of Art Curator Lisa Tung and museum staff selected work for two outstanding exhibitions—Off the Wall and A Community of Artists.  The 61 works in Off the Wall and 140 works in A Community of Artists were selected from 580 entries submitted by 342 member artists.   In recent years these exhibits have been widely reviewed, which is unusual for large group shows.  The New England arts community has become aware of the significance of these two shows, and we are visited by an increasing number of curators—a sign that the Danforth Museum of Art has become a venue not only for historically important exhibits, but also for new and exciting contemporary art that is finding its way into other museums and private collections.  We invite you to become part of this conversation by joining us for a special Off the Wall Patron’s Preview on Saturday, May 30th from 8-10 pm.  This elegant event brings together artists, collectors, and the museum community for a fundraiser that supports our award winning exhibitions—and provides a first opportunity to purchase works from both emerging and established artists.  Please join us!

While many other New England museums are choosing a national or even global focus, the Danforth Museum of art remains committed to the region.  This is evident not only in the Off the Wall events held each spring, but also in our continued commitment to our New England Currents series and the New England Photography Biennial scheduled to open this September.  

Katherine French, Director
May 2009 

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April 2009


Susan L. Roth
Detail from Listen to the Wind
, 2008, Courtesy of the Artist

Community Collaborations

Community collaboration continues to be key to what we do here at the Danforth Museum of Art, and a wonderful example is our recent participation in the Framingham Public Library’s “One Book” initiative centered on Greg Mortenson’s best selling book Three Cups of Tea.  Thanks to a suggestion from Librarian Jeanne Kelley, the Museum worked with children’s book illustrator Susan Roth to organize the very first exhibition of original art work used to create Listen to the Wind, which uses art to tell the story of Mortenson’s near-fatal attempt to scale the treacherous peaks of K2, his rescue by Pakistan villagers, and then efforts his to build a school for girls in thanks for their help.  Roth’s colorful cut paper and fabric collage have received wide acclaim, and her book has been #1 on the New York Times best seller list for children’s books for the past ten weeks. 

During April School Vacation Week students enrolled in Museum School workshops will visit with the artist, and then and appear Saturday morning, April 25 to discuss her book.  She will be joined Julia Berman from the Central Asia Institute, the inspirational librarian who helped create a library for the first school Mortenson helped build in Korphe, Pakistan.  While the talk is most appropriate for adults, older children may attend and a collage workshop for younger children has been scheduled to take place concurrently.  The Museum is thrilled participate as part of the Library’s wide-ranging programs that have served to bring members of the local community together and connect us all to a greater understanding of our world.

  • Listen to the Wind, Exhibition in the Children’s Gallery, March 4-May 3, 2009

  • Conversations with Susan L. Roth, author/illustrator of Listen to the Wind, and Julia Bergman,
    Chair of the Board of Directors of the Central Asia Institute, Saturday, April 25, 10-11 am

  • Art Workshop for Children: Explore Collage, Saturday April 25, 9:45-11:15 am

  • Framingham Reads Together 

Recent Exhibition Reviews 

Three Photographers Explore the Earth in Danforth Exhibits
By Chris Bergeron, The MetroWest Daily News, March 29, 2009

Eye See You
Artsake Blog, March 4, 2009

Brickbottom Artists Exhibit at the Danforth Museum
The Somerville Journal, March 3, 2009

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March 2009


From Left: Audrey Goldstein, Michelle Samour, Debra Weisberg, Julia Shepley
Courtesy of the Artists'
Design Credit Steve Lenox

Connection to A Larger World

Recognized as a premier venue for contemporary art, the Danforth Museum of Art is pleased to show continued support for the regional arts community in five new exhibits of work by New England artists, as well as an exhibit by a New York artist with recent ties to Framingham.  Each displays an exciting sense of shared conversation—demonstrating our ability to work independently, yet to remain connected to our contemporaries.

Conversation and collaboration are central to at least two exhibits.  Artist Deborah Davidson explores visual and verbal language in multi-layered collage paintings that are alternately built up and worn away—a poignant demonstration of ways in which we seek to communicate.  Material Drawing features work by the award winning New England artists Audrey Goldstein, Michelle Samour, Julia Shepley, Debra Weisberg, and explores such unconventional materials brass wire, torn tape and reflected light.  But one of the most remarkable aspects of their work lies in their willingness to collaborate with each other.  For nearly two years, Material Drawing artists have met regularly to discuss their work—not as critique, but as part of the process of making art.

Three new photography and new media exhibits embrace this sense of community, but in a more global way.  Robert Alter has spent the last six years photographing the overpowering structures situated around La Defense at the western edge of Paris.  In her multi-media installation regardregard, Mary Oestereicher Hamill projects videos of Chinese people in ancient Beijing against those who dwell now in New York City’s Chinatown—a layered study of community interaction.  Finally, internationally renowned photographer Abelardo Morell shows new work exploring the technique of cliché verre, an antique method connecting him to such painters as Corot and Millet.  The hand drawn negatives displayed in Continental Drift reveal global continents from an aerial perspective, visually uniting the distinctly foreign parts of our world.

Finally, far reaching elements of our world are brought close in an exhibition of original fabric collage by children’s book illustrator Susan Roth.  These works illustrate her recently published children’s book Listen to the Wind, written in collaboration with Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson, insist upon a universal approach to art making and shared imagery—and the understanding that community is vitally important.   

Accompanying the Material Drawing exhibition will be a 24 page illustrated catalog with an essay by curator Katherine French will be available for sale in the Museum shop. The artists will present two panel discussions Wednesday, March 18 at noon and Sunday, April 26 at 3 pm.  Presentations are free to Museum members, or with paid admission.

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February 2009


Sedrick Huckaby, A Love Supreme, 2002 - Present
Sedrick Huckaby
A Love supreme, 2002 - Present
oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Artist

Warmth of Community

Although the weather is cold and dreary outside, the Museum and its Museum School are warm and cozy due to a plethora of exhibitions, special events and workshops. 

Walk inside the Museum to find yourself surrounded by the vibrant and colorful quilts by Faith Ringgold, the monumental painted quilts by Sedrick Huckaby, and contemporary quilts created by women across the country in our Mixed Media Fiber Arts exhibition.  Enroll your child in a School Vacation Workshop and he or she will have the exciting opportunity to not only create their own imaginative art works but to also meet Faith Ringgold and receive a copy of her illustrated children’s book, Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky, the illustrations of which are currently on view in our Children’s Gallery.  Learn with your child! Visit the museum during First Sunday Drop into Art, between 2-4pm on Sunday, March 1st. Participate in gallery activities with the Museum's teen docents before creating works of art together in the Museum School. Designed especially for families, activities are perfect for families with children ages 5-10.  Exciting art projects will be inspired by current exhibitions.  This program is made possible by generous support from Framingham Co-operative Bank.

In the 1960s, Faith Ringgold had just received her Masters degree in Studio Art from City College in New York and had just begun a new family.  On the brink of a new career and a new stage in her life, she decided to visit Europe to see the works of the Old Masters.  She brought her family to the Louvre Museum in Paris and fondly remembers the exact moment when she realized what her purpose would be in her own art.  As she sat on a bench in the Museum and watched her children dancing around due to their boundless energy, she noticed that something was missing in the works of the Old Masters she encountered.  People of color were not represented.  She decided then and there to populate museums with different faces from the African American heritage.

At the Danforth Museum of Art, viewers can see a rarely exhibited painted quilt of Faith Ringgold’s efforts to create an inclusive story of the history of art.  She paints herself seated at a Parisian café with a panoply of artists who have been influential to her, both French and American, male and female, black and white.  Ringgold has imagined an epic tale and has created twelve story quilts related to this tale about Willia Marie Simone, a 16 year old African American girl in the 1920s that lives the life no African American woman could have ever dreamed of living.  We are very fortunate to have one of these quilts on display in our exhibition, Story Quilts.  Please come and take a look when you are here.

We are also very fortunate to welcome Faith Ringgold to the Danforth for a book signing during School Vacation Workshops on Tuesday, February 17 from 3-5 pm and for a lecture at 7pm at the Dwight Performing Arts Center at Framingham State University.  Please call or look on our website for details about this exciting event.

Come hear Jeanne Williamson speak on contemporary quilting and the exhibition she curated, Mixed Media Fiber Arts, this Saturday, February 7 at 3 pm.  We are also pleased to announce that Sedrick Huckaby will be making a special trip to the Danforth from his home in Texas to give a gallery talk on Saturday, February 15 at 3 pm.

So, don’t let the cold, wet weather dampen your spirits.  Walk into the Museum, hear artists speak, see your child create art in the school, and be enveloped by the warmth of community at the Danforth Museum of Art!

Lisa Leavitt
Associate Curator & Museum Registrar

Related Articles

Artscope Magazine
January/February 2009, James Forantino
Faith Ringgold: Story Quilts

The Boston Globe West
Denise Taylor, February 5, 2009
The Many Tugs of Fabric   

WGBH: Greater Boston
January 28th, 2009 
Danforth Museum of Art Segment 

The Boston Globe 
Sebastian Smee, January 11, 2009 
A believer in unsung art at a museum in transition 

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January 2009


John Willson, Head Study, 2002
John Wilson
Head Study, 2002
etching with aquatint and chine colle
20 x 16 inches, Edition 50
Courtesy of the Artist and Center Street Studio

Visitors to the Museum will have the opportunity to see exciting new work during the month of January.  A brand new exhibition showcases renowned painter, sculptor and printmaker John Wilson.  Raised in Roxbury and educated at the Museum School, Wilson went on to study with Fernand Léger in Paris and with the muralist José Clemente Orozco in Mexico.  During his long career, Wilson has achieved great success with shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and commissions for public sculpture. 

In addition to Wilson's prints commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. - particularly appropriate during January when we will honor the accomplishments of this great civil rights leader, The Danforth Museum of Art is also pleased to present a print suite illustrating a short story by renowned author Richard Wright. The story, Down by the Riverside, is the second short story in Wright's 1938 book Uncle Tom's Children.

A second new exhibition curated by nationally renowned fiber artist Jeanne Williamson, features work by some of the most exciting fiber artists working in the field today.  On view starting Wednesday, January 7, Mixed Media Fiber Art,  includes still lifes, landscapes, interiors, and portraits in a variety of styles.  These mixed media techniques provide a perfect counterpoint to the Faith Ringgold's Story Quilts.  Traditional fiber techniques such as piecing, appliqué and reverse appliqué stand in direct contrast to more experimental applications of paint, collage and printmaking.  Viewed together, these shows examine the traditions of African American quilt making, as well the crafts that have been historically practiced by women.


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December 2008


Creating an Environment for Growth

Those who have remarked upon Esther Pullman’s lovely image of a greenhouse in mid-winter used for our Annual Appeal will be pleased to know that this work is on now on view at the Museum as part of an exhibition of Pullman’s of greenhouses.  Beginning with the greenhouses at Wellesley College, Pullman has now photographed greenhouses from around the world.  Inspired by her love of gardens and architecture, she also pays homage to Albers and his composition of space on a flat plane.  Pullman maintains that her exploration is visual and intuitive.  She has “not self-consciously tired to imbue them with meaning,” but admits that “big themes do seem to be lurking there: cycles of the season, light and dark, life and death, renewal.”

This idea of renewal speaks perfectly to where the Museum finds itself at the present—as does the artist’s gift of this photograph to our permanent collection.  We have worked hard to create an environment that sustains growth.  The generosity of friends and members make it possible to thrive despite a harsh economic climate.  The artist has made of gift of work for visitors to enjoy well into the future, and your gift will help insure that future.  Please consider making a year end, tax deductible donation to our Annual Fund.  It will be greatly appreciated.        

Esther Pullman: Environment for Growth
November 26- February 8, 2009

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November 2008


Faith Ringold
Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #4
2004
acrylic on canvas with pieced border
82 x 68 inches

Celebrate Art and Community

November has brought a change of seasons and a new American president.  This historic period has sparked lively discussion and debate about the role the arts can play in strengthening our society.  Last week at the New England Museum Association Annual Meeting in Warwick, RI, keynote speaker Curt Columbus, Trinity Repertory Company Artistic Director addressed this issue.  He spoke about the importance of museums and cultural institutions as democratic forums. These forums provide a setting to engage in artistic experiences and share ideas encouraging us to interact with each other in a time where television and technology allow increasing isolation.

The Museum’s winter exhibits celebrate a diverse group of significant American artists that will surely inspire conversation.  We encourage you to visit the Museum to explore six new exhibits and become part of this important discussion.

Faith Ringgold has been creating “story” quilts since the 1970s.  Combining acrylic painting on canvas, quilted fabric, and actual text that tells a story, these quilts have catapulted Ringgold to international fame.   Instead of stretching her canvas over wooden stretchers, Ringgold, in collaboration with her mother, a fashion designer, began to sew fabric borders around her paintings.  Working with fabric has been a strong part of Faith’s family history, beginning with Ringgold’s great, great grandmother, who was a slave and had made quilts for her slave-owners.  She later incorporated written text into her works that communicated the themes most important to her: stories of her own life, of African American women and artists throughout history, and of racial and gender inequality.

On view will be a selection of Ringgold’s quilted works, including, Le Café Des Artistes, a story quilt which has not been exhibited for ten years due to its location in a private collection.  This quilt depicts Ringgold herself amongst several prominent modernist artists and writers:  Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Paul Gauguin, Jacob Lawrence and Harlem Renaissance artist, Meta Warrick Fuller

In conjunction with the depiction of these latter two notable African American artists in Ringgold’s quilt, the Danforth Museum of Art will be exhibiting the prints of Jacob Lawrence and the sculptures of Meta Warrick Fuller in adjoining galleries.

 

 

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October 2008


Skeleton in Red Dress, Hyman Bloom, c. 1942-45
Hyman Bloom
Skeleton in Red Dress, c. 1942-45
oil on canvas
Promised gift of
Drs. Francene and G. Timothy Orrok

The Museum is pleased to announce the gift of a major painting by the renowned Boston Expressionist artist Hyman Bloom, an artist whom Willem DeKooning called “the first Abstract Expressionist.” Those who were able to view the Bloom exhibition held at the Museum in early 2007, will remember the dark visions of an artist whose work approached abstraction, but remained firmly rooted in a world of material form.  Skeleton in Red Dress represents a dramatic response to the disturbing events of the Second World War, and is one of the finest examples of Bloom’s early work.  Generously donated by Francene and Tim Orrok of Ashland, Oregon, Skeleton in Red Dress will be a focal point of our permanent collection and sure to attract national interest.

Boston Expressionism is central to the Museum’s artistic vision and future programming.  While we have organized several important shows, including Jack Levine: Political Discourse and Hyman Bloom: A Spiritual Embrace, the Museum’s collection of works by these artists has been modest.  Skeleton in Red Dress is the first major painting by Hyman Bloom to enter our permanent collection.  This generous donation by Francene and Tim Orrok will surely encourage other such gifts, creating the possibility that the Danforth Museum of Art will become host institution to a significant, but often overlooked school of American painting.

We have now reached a critical juncture in the history of the Museum, in which Trustees have committed to seriously consider a major renovation or new construction.  It is clear that at least one of the renovated or new galleries will be given over to Boston Expressionism, and Skeleton in Red Dress will be central in how we envision a permanent display of these works.  This moving and eloquent painting not only represents a major work by one of America’s most important expressive artists, but also helps paint a picture of what the Museum will look like in the future.

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September 2008


Joan Snyder, Boy in Afghanistan, 1988
Boy in Afghanistan, 1988
oil and acrylic on linen
24 x 30 inches

There is a fresh look to the Museum this Fall. Visitors will have the opportunity to see four new contemporary exhibits opening with an artists’ reception on Saturday, September 13. MacArthur grant recipient Joan Snyder has gifted her painting Boy in Afghanistan to the Museum and worked with Director Katherine French on the exhibition One Blue Sky, featuring similar paintings that incorporate news photography into her political and expressive work. A large chevron painting by Katherine Porter has also come into the museum’s permanent collection through the generosity of Arthur and Mimi Rosenberg, and is the focus of the exhibition Splendid Cities. And we are particularly excited by the survey of work presented in Jo Sandman: Once Removed. Most recently known for photographic work, Sandman is also an artist who explores non traditional materials to create elegant works that challenge our conception of drawing and painting. Finally, we welcome Carolyn Evans’ poignant meditation on the loss of her New Orleans childhood home in the exhibit Katrina’s Third Birthday—No Cake.

In addition to these exciting new exhibitions, unfamiliar works from our permanent collection are also on view. This summer, researchers discovered a preliminary drawing and oil sketch for Hercules and Nessus, 1897 by Philip Leslie Hale in Museum’s approximately 3,500 stored works. We are very pleased to present this significant painting along with the studies, and anticipate much interest among art historians.

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